(Massachusetts, September)

Smooth as skin

they strew themselves in drifts

of winking mica eyelids.

The price is right: you could find

the perfect Lucky – white-striped

granite, ground by glaciers, formed

to your hand -- as wavelets

turn them over; but for the next

more perfect, and the next.

Pay no mind to those geese shafting

the air, trailing goose gossip

the rasp of salt in the breeze

filing us down

or how flat skipped ones

vanish with no trace.

The rocks reside, hypnotic

fragments of an ancient

birth: indifferent

to all longings

and all tides

Version first published in The Raven's Perch, 12 December 2022