Bruce Stater

Stones


I gather stones.

I am tired.
My mind is empty.
It is difficult to work.

I gather stones.

Some broken, some smooth.
Some heavy and too large for my hands.
Some that roll across my palms, light as a feather.
Some hard and sturdy, others brittle,
Eager to crumble into grains of sand, form clouds of dust.
Some warm, soft and smooth as clay,
Separate prayers created from flesh of living earth.
Some cold and gray and dead as ash.

I gather stones.

I put thought to thought
Pebble beside pebble
To shore up rent and void of no-thought.
Mingle clay with ash and draw earthworm from frozen tundra.
I scoop dried grass from cold ground up to my knuckles
And draw my nails across the hard skin of blocks of ice.
I cover my face with red, yellow, black, brown, and green dirt.
I boil roots and mud in stone soup.
I collect the shells of insects the bones of reptiles, birds and small
mammals
And plant seeds where some will grow and others won't.

I am tired.
It is difficult to work.
My mind is empty but my arms are full of stones.

I say each stone has a meaning and make it a phrase in a song.
I sing in the language of stones because I know no other language,
I have no other way of speaking.
My tongue is heavy in my mouth.
I never learned to speak with the words others use to speak and sing.

When they learned to sing I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to write I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to paint I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to carve I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to sculpt I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to dance I was busy gathering stones.

When they played together I felt lost.
Between stone and stone I couldn't feel the distinction between work
and
play.
It was all work to me, a slow and difficult work
Built singly of stones.

I gather stones.


I learned to say that the skipping of a pebble across the surface of
the
stream
Was a butterfly in flight in the summer sky.
I learned to say that the sparks made from pounding two pieces of flint
Were the notes of the nightingale in the autumnal evening.
I learned to say the texture of a moss-covered rock
Was the felt on the neck of a doe.
That the dry astringency of lime
Was the collective memory of a burdened and oppressed people.
That the silt flowing between my fingers
Was the cry of a mother mourning the loss of her child.
That the light inside a crystal of quartz
Was the glow of a collective consciousness.

But my tongue was still heavy with the weight of stones
And where others could dance and sing lightly from thought to thought
I struggled to lift one thing to the next.
Stone would not adhere to stone.
The dust of the butterfly's wing would not color the neck of the fawn
Whether I mixed its paint with a mother's tears
Or the sweat which poured from my palms.
When the others could mingle dance with song and thing to action
I could not even affix stone to stone
But held them together in my tired arms.

I gather stones.

And because stone will not congeal to stone,
I learned to balance stone upon stone.
Sometimes a piece of chalk resting on a slate of granite,
Sometimes a bit of broken obsidian to support a column of marble.

And I learned to say that this flake of feldspar supporting an amethyst
geode
Was the work of a fractured mind sustaining the dream of utopia
That a piece of clay wrapped around a few grains of sand
Was the arm of a loved one embracing someone in pain.

I gather stones.

I am tired.
My mind is empty.
It is difficult to work.





Bruce Stater: A little more than three years ago I entered into a psychosis that lasted approximately nine months. During this time, I suffered from delusions, hallucinations, cognitive impairment, extreme fits of terror, bizarre patterns of behavior, occasional catatonia, and magical thinking. I was hospitalized twice and eventually received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, paranoid type. During the first hospitalization at Bellevue I had little insight concerning my condition, refused medication, and made no progress in my recovery. At Metropolitan Hospital, in part because I was treated with more respect and understanding than I had been at Bellevue, I began taking medication, and slowly began the long journey of recovery from schizophrenia.

I spent the next two years in a deep depression, unable to work, read, play, experience pleasure, or hold much of a conversation. Medication helped with the positive symptoms but the negative ones persisted. During this period I gave up hope of ever finishing the dissertation I had been working on, dropped out of a graduate program in Comparative Literature, and spent each day struggling to make it to the next.

Gradually, after a period of approximately two years, and with the support of my loving wife, Lori, I began to feel a bit more alive. I found myself living in a world with light once again. It became easier to hold a conversation, my mind no longer felt empty, and I could begin imagining the future once again. I began reading. I applied to Teacher¹s College, Columbia University where I am currently pursuing an M.A. degree in English Education. I hope to become a high school English teacher. I currently live in Astoria, New York with my wife, Lori, and our cat, Beans.






Joe Hackworth Bruce Stater Rick Parsons Jerry Hicks Colin Van der Woude Shaela Phillips Martin Rutley K. R. Copeland Jack Cannon Dave Ruslander