Category: Poetry

“Gem and Mineral Exhibit at Natural History Museum” by Mr.TinDC is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Even the Rocks Cry Out

By Jane Tawel

January 23, 2023

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I wrote this after a visit to the Los Angeles History Museum’s incredible gem and mineral collection and exhibit. For better writers than I on rocks and other natural things that sing, talk, yell, shout and praise Creator-God, please read Habakkuk, Isaiah, the writers of the Psalms and the words of Jesus of Nazareth.

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Even the Rocks Cry Out

By Jane Tawel

*

The world can seem lonely,

and I doubt there can be a God.

Otherwise, wouldn’t He or She or They

care?

*

Everything aches,

inside me and without.

And people keep killing each other,

while churches and synagogues and mosques

make more and more and more money

 to feed their superstars.

While the masses go hungry

for the lack of a miracle

of people sharing their loaves and fishes.

*

Ah, yes, Superstars.

We would rather worship running backs

and quarterbacks and rappers and

pretty people all in a row.

But the real stars in the sky

are consumed by our false neon-lights,

and the darkness is completed–

in the heavens as it is on earth.

The stars. The stars!–

Those magical rocks that glow in the sky–

Ah, where are the stars?

They have been put out,

just as the bridesmaids whose oil ran out

on their way to the Great Wedding.

*

No, the celestial lights,

 don’t bother to speak to us anymore.

We stopped listening to the wisdom of the stars

just as we stopped listening to the trees,

and birds and bees.

We are too busy trying to explore and exploit them all.

Busy, busy, busy, busy as bees,

And we are killing the bees with our business

just as we kill ourselves.

Sometimes even killing ourselves by

the saddest, most hopeless choice.

Perhaps because there are no more stars of light in the darkness.

*

And I feel like a very small and useless pebble,

tossed on a god’s whim,

into the roiling angry waves,

of a sea perpetually at storm.

Cast out.

Cast out.

A useless stone, cast out.

*

Yesterday I went downtown in L.A.–

Los Angeles–land of people hungry for stardom,

and begging for applause;

people also hungry for a meal

and begging for change.

Los Angeles – City of Angels,

and of Devils, too.

With the most human stars per capita,

and not a single star

that can break through, shine through

the city’s false lights and the smog.

Poor little luminaries,

all dressed up and no where to glow.

*

 Yesterday I went downtown in L.A.

and I visited the Natural Museum of History.

And there I saw the most amazing exhibit.

Among dead rows of extinct things,

or things nearing extinction,

like our planet, our poor dying planet.

I saw a living universe of color and light.

I happened upon a world unearthed.

*

There in row after row,

were rocks that glowed.

The glass cases held

every color of the rainbow.

Hundreds of minerals and gems

with tiny little placards

that tried their best to name

the unfathomable, unique glories of rocks.

An entire cosmos seemed to breathe,

in and out, and in and out.

*

How can rocks breathe, you ask?

I guess you had to be there;

holding your own breath as I held mine,

to hear the inhalations

and soft, sweet exhales of a rock’s breath.

There I stood alone in a crowd,

and communed with

that which is found under the earth.

“Ah, bless the hands that discovered

the jewels of the Earth!” I thought.

And still, I forgot,

to bless the womb

of She Who created them.

*

And yet, there among the rocks,

that seemed silent

in a world of our noisiness,

I discovered this:

There must have been a Creator.

And whatever you may call Him or Her or Them –

This Creator has created this planet with love,

and us with it.

There is no other way to understand,

how there can be so many different and

beautiful, incredible, unbelievable things—

even just the most simple of things

that we call minerals or gems;

let alone the creation of a butterfly wing,

or a whale’s song, or a human eye.

There must be Something – Someone –

Who said, “Let Us play with the dirt

and see what we can make.”

*

Only love and beauty and wonder and delight

and playfulness and joy

and creativity beyond human understanding—

could make the scope and breadth,

of things we might call – “stones”.

*

How else do you explain –

quartz, and opals,

aquamarine, and talc,

chrystobalite, adomite, hematite,

beryl and benitoite,

agate, emerald,

diamond and pearl,

painite, mica, and more.

hardness, luster,

streak, color,

fracture, gravity,

tenacity, flaws—

*

Oh, I entered there

with a heart as hard as stone.

But my feet were set upon a rock,

and I was hugged by the rocks,

for want of shelter.

*

I was silenced

 by the world’s hardness.

There was no faith left

in calcified lungs, or mind, or heart.

And then standing

in a temple of wisdom

in down town L.A.

Suddenly —

A riotous, wild cheering!

an adoring psalm broke out!–

among the most inert, unmovable things

that any god could create.

I looked around but no one else there seemed to hear them.

The minerals and gems were yelling at me.

Now singing as a choir, in harmony—

Now performing as soloists.

All were praising their Creator,

their loving Parent

The God of each mammoth mountain,

and each tiny stone.

The Creator of every fallen leaf

every stone unturned,

every child who ever felt unloved,

were held, and turned and loved by Him.

All the rocks knew their Maker,

the Creative Genius of the whole world,

still holding all He loves

in the deep caves of His hands.

All the rocks knew their Mother,

has She not told us?–

“I am the Rock of your Salvation.”

*

And even an inert, unmovable thing,

like my heart had become;

even the mountain I had built of my doubt,

were moved.

I was moved to cry, “My God!”—

*

as even the rocks cried out.

*

“I tell you truthfully, if every voice on the planet is stilled, then even the rocks themselves will cry out in praise of the Parent-Creator.” – Jesus of Nazareth.

© Jane Tawel, 2023