I Am Stone Cold Sober

I Am Stone Cold Sober

Take from the sea its seasoned stones
scattered along the tide’s edge
Take from the sea its seasoned wood
drifting along the tide’s edge

Lug them great distances from beach to car
and arrive at home bearing sweet gifts
from the seasoned sea, remembering
everything came to you and clambered
into your hand or begged at your foot
to be granted a second life at your hands.

So many songs around stones and stoned
and being stoned, and one story about a man
who said the first stone should be thrown
by a person who had never sinned.

In the lore of the old ones stones call to you
and all of these have called to me, clamored
to come into my garden and live among
the others heaped around my work bench.

And three or four or five or six want me,
cry to me to be placed together in one singing
work of my hands. Then we must find
the beads to dress the stones, and the wood

from which they all will fall like stony
chandeliers. Other stones, unchosen,
watch quietly as the process begins,
the lengths of copper wire pulled, then marked
then beaded and finally the crying stones

begin their slow ascent to their driftwood
head through the spiderweb of weavery.
From the sea to the soaring is a long
afternoon, and one can listen to their singing
only for a stone’s throw of time.


I make these “earrings for the garden” and sell them at wineries sometimes, but mostly they decorate my garden and my home. I dislike selling them because each one is created differently, and I worry it won’t be cared for properly, will be thrown in a trunk of someone’s car like a cheaply soldered piece from China. My garden earrings are fragile and need to be treated with the respect for something held together by magic and willpower.
Needless to say, I don’t sell many any more.
The iron sphere in the garden contains a stone from Sedona, Arizona, suspended with great equilibrium from its center. One of the others I call the Tau. The alternating light and dark one I call Hope, and the small double one is my Beach Scene.
I started working with stones when I sobered up again after drinking in 2006. In rehab, I found some obsidian, pumice, beads, feathers, and copper wire, as well as oak branches to suspend them from.
They hang from a wall in the hallway that I call my Sober Wall. I can’t walk past it without smiling for the hours of pleasure they gave me, and the new art they inspired.
I didn’t take any photos of the ones hanging outside because the garden has grown so weatherbeaten. Picture these hanging from a shepherd’s hook, and you can get the idea.
A sober craft brought to you by Enchanted Oak.

Chris Alba © 2009