MONEY: A SMALL STONE

In this dream I had

one hundred thousand

dollars in cash, all

in these flimsy, white

paper notes. They kept

flying from my grasp

in the wind; I tried

hard to control them.

Then I found this green

plastic bag and used it

to stuff them inside,

and stuck the whole

package down inside

the front of my pants.

Actually this is cheating a bit. It's not properly a small stone. It's a small poem. Or not even. Once you call something a "poem," there's a risk of wanting it to be "literature" instead of "writing." My preference is for "writing." To write a small stone you have first to stop and pay attention, take note of what's happening in the here and now, and write down the words that result from that act of consciousness. A dream, of course, is a gift from the unconscious mind, and hardly qualifies as a purposeful act of consciousness. In this sense, a small stone would look more like this:

Thick, offshore

morning mist. George

on a leash. My footsteps

ring hollow on the pavement.

Far off, the dull crash

of waves on the shore;

closer in, a voice, human.

I wear my warm bear shirt

against the chill. Homeward

bound, George stops, first

for a pee, then a crap. It's

nearly breakfast time.

Consider this another invitation to find your own small stone, feel its weight in your hand, and skip it off into the flow of the whole river of stones that is, I hope, gathering momentum in the world.

As the Beatles sang, memorably, long ago: we all want to change the world. If enough of us would pause for long enough in the rush of our lives to simply pay attention, even for a moment, we could become the wellspring for a small stream, then a river, then an ocean of consciousness and compassion. But then, of course, you may say I'm a dreamer. Which is where I started out!