And what is more generous than a window?

—inscription on Pat Schneider’s headstone,
June 1, 1934–Aug. 10, 2020

•••

Along your windowsills you arranged stones
picked up and pocketed on your walks,
the odd small cypress pod or a small cobalt
feather a jay might have left for you.

I, too, keep rocks on windowsills, even on my
kitchen counter, loosely arranged, some atop
others like lounging puppies, with a bit of
abalone or a pearly cowry picked up on a
beach on Kauai.

Why do we collect bits of the outside to bring in?
What is it about the smooth bit of shell in the pocket
that our fingers find when the hand sinks in
for warmth or keys? Why do we heft the stone
in one palm as the other grasps the toothbrush?

The reassuring there-ness of rocks calls me,
especially as I think of you, no longer here,
but where your there is, I can’t say, and I have
given up trying to imagine. It doesn’t matter.
You are as solidly with those who love you
as the stones or shell bits.

Do you know that after you died, your children
took the rocks from the sills, from your desk
and bookshelves, and set them around your
headstone, inviting people who loved you
to take one?

How I wish I had flown across the country
to pick up one of them, knowing it had graced
your palm, that it was important enough for you
to bring home, place carefully and admire. As if I
don’t already carry so many pebbles you dropped
into the fabric of me, embedded in memory,
that whisper,

Here. There. With you. Always.