What Rocks Know

Before Joseph Smith saw God, he had this pretty thought
that you can know the world by putting your face in a hat
to look at a rock. Which makes sense if you think about it,
since a rock is able to know what rocks know; especially
a good rock, and even inferior stone: enough to keep a rock
rock, to keep any pebble what is most likely for it to be. 

That’s probably what Joseph Smith meant: we are tossing,
we are coming to one kind of trouble or another,
always squinting at the sun, always trying to become.
Which is not a trick tried by granite or flint or slate,
which may have been Joseph’s point: what you see
in a hat is dark, still: the band, the felt, the mineral. 

What you hear in a hat is least of all the voice of God,
but the beginning of His voice: the silence before the sound, as
 the dark before His face. And ultimately: the captain’s treasure
which young Joe Smith eventually found: gold. A golden book,
and an angel to deliver language above ground. Which is what comes 
from looking blind into your hat sufficient to unwinding from the dark 

a sight of God. I’m not saying so, except to think: what a pretty story 
to believe the game of Joseph Smith, the boy-not-yet-a-prophet
finding water, treasure, and a decent living in upstate off-road New York. 
I’m not saying what he saw or did not. Except: there was water there, 
which no one argues. And eventually treasure, as several wit nesses said. 
And it doesn’t take a Mormon to know the price of gold, the weight
of so many angels and two Gods dancing in a farmer’s hat.
I’m not claiming either way, except to remember: Brigham
told every man to discover such materiel. He himself had found
as many as he had wives, and probably with less trouble.
What I am saying is: there are worse ways to discover God.
When the leper put a crust into the Buddha’s begging bowl, 

and the cripple’s finger severed beside the bread, the Buddha
            ate 
without removing what was not food. I no longer beg; but if I
            did, 
I would discover a rock, since everyone who disagrees with such
has not seen God, nor heard the voice of God, nor wondered
            how 
so small an issue as the intelligence of stones can teach us the
            world 
and how to find water and gold and other treasure in the quiet
            dark.