The Art of Making Stone Love Stone: Poem Collection

By Barbara L. Mcbee

The Art of Making Stone Love Stone was born of my inner journey through love, loss, and redemption; through the light at the end of grief and the resurrection through creativity. It is the thing we most crave, most elusive, and, yet, is all around us. For every artisan who's realizing love...each and every day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rushmore Press LLC
• Release date: Dec 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781957220055

Barbara L. Mcbee

Barbara L. McBee is a former Bureau Chief, News Director, and reporter; an author and poet, who's small piece was included in Yoko Ono's 2019 work, Arising, that toured Montreal and Leipzig. She is a third culture kid, global citizen and storyteller. She has read for Chicago's longest running festival, Fillet of Solo, This Much is True, Goodman Theatre, and Theatre on the Lake. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a practitioner of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism. She is the author of The Art of making Stone love Stone Poem Collection and From a Place to Behold: The Goodman Theatre Stories.

Book preview

ISBN 978-1-957220-03-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-957220-04-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-957220-05-5 (digital)

Copyright © 2021 by Barbara L. McBee

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Rushmore Press LLC

1 800 460 9188

www.rushmorepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgment

Against a crack in time

Balloon

It was the first day of spring

Ode to spirit

A feather wafted across my path

A fern

A great ship majestic of sail

If tenderness were a flower

1001

birth

Black smoke. Tossing

The case of the missing spirit

Cataclysms

Charcoal chartreuse

Come here

Fall

February blues

First snow

How do you put out a fire

I am not at home

I grieve you

I thought I heard your voice in

I wanted it

If I open like a flower

If you lost yourself in me

In the spirit of decoration

It is bluer than I imagined

Like a delicate brulee crust

Listen to her spirit

Lucky seven

Melancholy is a good word

It is Monday

A chill slid across my heart and this harbinger tore open a stream of assaults

Ocean

My table is filled

offering

One, two, three

Poem one and two

Today is a special day

Prestige

Red

Curled across a chest

She was a treasure

Sorcerer

Special delivery

Spring and the feathers floated across the yard

Stop here, she said

The call

The end of an era

The photos have no meaning

I can turn three minutes into

Under the deep

Under the magnolia tree

Under the boxwood

The unmade bed

Volcanic ash spewed

You digest

Acknowledgment

For every artisan realizing love . . . is within and around you . . . everywhere you look . . .

For Phyllis . . . for my mentor Daisaku Ikeda, a true warrior of the pen . . .

May you find great joy from within.

Against a crack in time

Pounded against a crack in time

I was catapulted through an unopen door

I met myself; I met a rush of unspeakable courage and daring

A light was lit in the house of rooms gone empty and dormant

A gust of wind blew a scrap of old newspaper around on the dusty floor

I unfolded it and it was moist and good as new

The date was a thousand years ago

There was no headline because it was a slow day that year

When conversation meant more to each of us and you could still smell snow coming when you lifted your eyes to the sky

I heard a tingle in the bell that rang in my heart it grew to a fierce clanging but the clacker sent it round

Reverberating against that unopened door came the offering of sound so resonant the walls bled

Tears

The walls bled tears dripping across that old headline and I smelled snow and salt

From a thousand years ago

October 22, 2013

Balloon

I