Pebbles on the Beach

With the tide come the rocks and stones it has chiselled out, split and shaped, dragged and pulled to end up on our shores, as our shores. The tide rises and falls in line with the opposing forces of moon and sun, and the inevitable tug of gravity. The stones, however far flung by a boisterous tide, are always earthbound. Until, that is, the stonestackers come.

Every couple of years a festival is held on a beach near me, a festival of rock-art and stonestacking.

For a long weekend we see stackers and makers from near and far arrive to delve among the infinite variety of pebbles, stones and rocks for pieces to create their structures.

The master stonestackers conjure monuments which seem to defy gravity — bulky rocks perched apparently weightless on small pebbles. But of course it is gravity they work with and exploit, along with friction and balance, to let the structure stand free.

*

Stonestacker
 for Pedro Duran, champion stonestacker

 Beard and bandana
   sun in his skin   weathered
      as the high sierras
   he comes
to this chilly northern shore
   to stack stones.

 He scans the beach
   a mystic in his desert   diviner
      of stones.
   He plucks an armful
and in his little arena
   begins.

 His hands caress each
   rock and pebble   feeling
      for its form and friction.
   Fingers nudge and stroke
sensing every fulcrum   as
   the stack rises
      stone on stone
   uniquely placed
suspending gravity

 until the final rock   rough-hewn
   and tapered through aeons
      of wave-crush and wind-scour
   is destined to tiptoe
on the smooth pebble
   below.

 He tests its touch   contrives
   the merest kiss
      of stones.
   The moment distils.
The lodestone stands
   free   its plumb line
      arrowing
   to the earth’s core.

 His open palms
   shape a blessing
      in a veil of air.

 The watchers clap and snap, impelled
to freeze the vanished instant
I wander off, longing for something
in me to be always poised like this,
   my head searching to connect,
      my breath trying to balance word on word.

*

As I contemplate the stonestack, it seems to me to embody a desire for a similar kind of balance or poise in ourselves, creatures pushed and pulled by conflict and circumstance, longing and aversion, glee and sorrow. A theme touched on here…

Seesaw

 I watch him kneeling on the floor,
his little tongue playing between his lips.
He’s balancing a ruler on a rolling pin,
trying for the point of rest, the seesaw in suspension,

 the poise we aim for endlessly but always miss,
that equilibrium we hope will see us through.
You’d think we’d get the hang of it as time went by –
older and wiser as the saying goes.

 But as I crawl between my ragged sheets at night,
I dream I’m on a clifftop, arms outstretched,
looking out to sea, the horizon lost in mist,
one foot on the rocky edge, the other on thin air.

In real life it seems such balance can be achieved, if at all, only in brief moments of illumination. Maybe some mystic squatting in a cave somewhere in a desert might get it after long hours of meditation. But for most of us, I suspect, the mess of life gets in the way. I think I’ll get myself down to the beach and try stacking a few stones.