My eye sweeps the path
to spot kindred stones flat
and just thick enough,
smooth and cool to the thumb.
They clack together in my sagging
pockets. It would be enough
to make cairns of them
in the garden, monuments
to endurance and memory.
But the bay is slack and gray
under a milky sky. I slip a stone
against the curve of my finger, sidearm
my chip of earth low and flat.
It resists gravity, just once, and sinks.
Now there is no stopping—
until my pockets are empty,
until I can catch seven skips on a toss,
lose myself in a weave of circles,
watch the disturbance settle.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 3.
Kristin W. Davis (kristinwdavis.com) earned an MFA in poetry in 2022 from the University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod, The Banyan Review, Passager and THINK, and on the Split this Rock blog and Maine Public radio’s Poems from Here. Her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and earned the International Human Rights Arts Festival’s Creators of Justice Award.
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