A Name In Stone

            I know special places in Golden Gate Park where thoughts can grow and flower with ease, where I can almost touch peace with my hand.  The AIDS Memorial Grove is such a place; thoughts like to gather there, sometimes into prayers.

            At the bottom of a hill, dogwood trees grow and a crescent-shaped bench bends around a wide circle of flagstone paving.  Nearby tall redwoods quietly hold their arms up filtering the light with green fingers, sometimes mingling colors with a gentle wind into song. 

            The spiral of names chiseled into the flagstone circle – hundreds of names now – is expanding.  There will be more names.  They will cover the entire stone floor.

            A carpet of names.  I’ve read the first hundred many times, reciting them like lines in a poem.  Now there are too many lines.  They comprise a book.

            How do you fit wide open arms, dancing feet, twinkling eyes, music in a heart, the comfort in a voice, joyful laughter or pain and tears, tenderness and courage, passion, strength and character, untiring love, fierce determination, a curious mind and gentleness of spirit into these letters cut into stone?  That is what I want to know.

            Stones know.  Old stones and rocks and boulders know much.  They are keepers, holders, carriers of burdens, of weighty things but also of feathers and leaves and patterns shadow makes or the rain.

            I know because I left thoughts, even smiles on the rocks I sat on.  Yet each time I return I find thoughts there I did not know before.  In the company of stones and boulders and rocks,  I see more.  I hear more.

            Sitting on a favorite rock, my back turned to the circle of names, holding sun on my lap, I wish for nothing more.  I close my eyes to keep what there is to see outside myself.  But I cannot shut off my inner ear.

            I hear moans, deep rumbles of sorrow.  They make me turn my head.  There is man on the bench, hunched, face curtained off by shade from the tired, wide brimmed hat. He clasps his knees.  I watch as he pushes himself up with effort and shuffles slowly across the unmarked stones to the circles of names.  There he stands and sways and stares at his feet.  He returns to the bench and sits down.  He removes the floppy hat and drops it beside him.  He bends forward and his naked, hairless head almost touches the knees.  He moans again.

            Mesmerized, I watch him get up twice more stare at the names and return to the bench settling beside the squashed hat.

            “Is there something I can do for you?,” I ask quietly.  One hand falls from his knee, the fingers grope for the gray hat.  They touch it but leave it be.  “It’s been done already,” he mutters, “Done already.”

            “What has been done already?”

            The man opens his eyes and looks at me.  He grabs his hat and puts it on.  I can no longer see his face. He does not answer me.  His silence pushes me to leave.  I walk away.

            The man’s words chase after me.  “Everything’s done already.  Somebody must think so.  They’ve carved my name into stone - there in the circle.  There’s still so much to do.  My life is not finished yet.”

            I don’t know what to say to that.

            I walk away from him faster and faster…