write about an object
Alchemy
the perfect skipping stone was
- as all perfect things are -
waiting for me
seven steps ahead on the beach
indicated by an arrow of molten, retreating sea
it is precisely round and smooth
and on its surface half onxy black
half paynes grey (the color of the sky now)
with a rip of ultramarine dividing them
(the color of the sky then)
I find it on the silver beach
the same beach on which i played
ceaselessly as a girl
writing love notes to the clouds with my toes
blessing my pets with sea kelp
leaping over the frothy part of the thinning
finishing waves
both feet together
just so
around then i learned my craft
I'd wait for the last gold to spill
from the sun and with my complete
commitment
to love
would gather some lowly sand and
toss it into the broad avenue of gold
I made it gold.
That's what alchemists do.
Once I threw in a rock, said a prayer for it
and for me, that I would see it again and today
there it is,
waiting for me
smaller, smaller by far
and ground down
not able to make a big splash now
but still something to not walk past maybe
though thirty some years of wave and drag
and wave and drag and storm and still
and bash and break
and clink and slide
have made it smaller
diminished
much less full of promise
so
the last piece of my youth.
mine to greet and hold
I tell it things I cannot say aloud
and speak as childhood disguised as a rock would understand
and hear as someone who hears back from her best self
kept in a thin, wet stone
I get in my rock skipper stance
The sun sets silver, spills itself towards me
(always towards me! I am blessed!) The cool
grey rippled with davy's grey, curling back into
steel blue, blue,zinc, titanium white on the crash
then retreating, stilling becoming flat and blue grey
this time - like all perfect times - is waiting, glistening
:the surface for its stone
throw
ah ah ah ah ah ah -six! (not bad!)
and just like that
meaning
changes
completely
into six
silver
circles
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