"Gray Stone" by Richard Hugo

A gray stone does not change color wet
or dry. Baked on a scorched road or shaded
by cedars, underground or tossed
into a bright green sky, it's always gray.
It is the stone of earth, of the down-to-earth
no nonsense way of knowing life
does not often of its own volition provide.
A gray stone will not
change your luck or shorten the mortgage
or make you young again. It doesn't say
"now" to investments - money or love.
It doesn't say "no" when you plot wrong things
you are sure you must do with your life
or die from the drone. Keep one gray stone
in a secret place, and when those you love
are broken or gone, listen
with a sustained, with a horrible attention
to the nothing it has always had to say.

Richard Hugo