PRACTICE
My father’s first attempt skipped once,
then twice, then sank. Horse creek
stretched as far as I could see,
then wound toward the county’s core,
oblivious and dank, catfish riding low
beneath the near-bank roots,
the rusted hulls of sunken cars.
He stooped to sort among the choices
—quartz and flakey shale, all jagged edges,
now and then a smooth, round dollop—
and then the one he finally chose,
thin, glazed with the centuries,
shaped like a tear. Maybe our ancestors,
Cherokees, had flung it down at the moon
hidden in the silt-filled shallows.
What would you have done,
standing there with that rock, fresh
from the earth, now in your hands?
Could you bear to give it back?
Would you, too, have snatched it
to yourself, hoping your child
was looking elsewhere, downstream,
small boy bent to the earth,
searching for his own stone polished
by all that came before,
all that would ever and ever come.
appeared in Passages North,
Winter/Spring 2009
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