Rock crystal, a clear quartz.
Ice-like, hope freezes
in one of the living stones.
Dipped in drinking water to protect
against disease, it transfuses
a bowlful with its gleam.
The charmstone radiates itself. Strange,
how it comes up from the earth
but lets light pass through it.
Last century the laughed at it.
The healing charm of a thousand years
was a tear running down skin.
When a hand holds the stone,
human touch encloses a white breath.
It is like us, made of star stuff.
The glass doctor comes to cure
in a small burst of energy,
the first beam of radiation therapy.