They sit motionless, watching passively, not engaged in the passage of time like you or I, yet not outside of it either. We travel the world searching for new experiences, new understandings of what it is to be alive. They watch us come and go and always return again to their steady gaze. Changed, yet somehow always the same.
They have no need for comings and goings, yet they do not mock us. They know better. They have seen enough to know that our days are short, and our nights long.
They’ve seen our births. They’ve seen our joys, our fears, our love, and our tears. They’ve seen us wed, and they’ve seen our blood shed by hate, by sorrow, by intoxication, by miscalculation. They’ve seen our recreation, our red tape, our revolutions. They’ve seen our wars, our battles, our nobles, our scoundrels. They’ve seen us die. They’ve seen our burials, our burning bodies, our ashes scattered amongst them.
This is their secret: knowing without any effort that if they wait a little longer they will see it all.
If you are still, and you can hear the silence between the rumbling oceans, you just might even hear them sing.
Each has a different voice- one loud, one soft, one strong, one deep, one high, one low, and one with the voice of our Grandmother.