I remember that stone in the stream.
I like to go back to that everyday miracle
which appeared just at my feet. And by everyday 
I mean there was no flash of radiance; 
the mountain did not speak to me.

But there it was: an ordinary stone, like a large gray egg.
Hawaiians use them for cooking a pig in a pit as well as for prayer.
And I like to remember the cliffs from which the stone must have come,
the steep Hawaiian pali with their tangles of green,
to remember how the sweat ran down my face and between my breasts,
as I ran by the waves rolling in,
like even to recall the dogs barking and snarling at me.

And by the stone, I mean hina stone, a woman’s prayer stone.
And by the dogs I mean adrenalin, how it lets you know you’re alive.
And by miracle I mean how our friend Ric, 
who could recite the names of all his Hawaiian ancestors,
knew the old ways, told us later
how to treat the stone kindly, giving it ti leaves, sea water.

And I mean hope 
when there was no cure for the cancer John had.
Even though he’s gone,
when I go back to that stream trailing down to the beach,
back to the stone he and I brought home,  
I remember
hope.

And I mean that trip when I returned the hina to North Shore—
that summer when John died—
and dropped it into the deep 
from a ragged borrowed boogie board at Sunset Beach
where John liked to surf—I was farther out than I’d ever been—
 
saw it leave my hand, go down,
right where the line-up would be
when the waves were big in the fall.

And the miracle is 
that for a moment at least, when I remember again,
he’s still here.

And I did see that rainbow; Ric saw it too,
lying like a silk scarf on the sea below the Seven Sacred Pools 
where John and our daughter and I had hiked when he was well. (cont’d, break)

And the miracle is, forty years later—		         			
after the death of John, who surely couldn’t die,	
so strong, so brown, so wedded with the waves,    
in spite of that small hard spot in my breast     
discovered the next year, quite by accident—            		
I’m still here,
and what I mean by miracle is
this warm bright August morning.