I lost a small piece of myself in the sea.
This stone I found: it was like any other,
but whether it was fate or something about how
Sunday evening's rain mixed with Monday
dawn's dew, slinking, shimmering on the
dull grey surface--I am halting for a moment,
strolling across the ancient streets of Budapest, watching
my feet kick up the gravel that had once been
particles of the majesty of the forbidding tower
of the church in which St. Stephen prayed, having
his stonemasons fashion flat, even slabs from
the rock unearthed by the rough
motion of plates, motion that in its own time
had carried the stone up from compression deep
beneath the footsteps of medieval men, echoing into
the very earth that swallows sediments and plunges them
into cold dry depths from the wide maw of the ocean
trench, where fragments of stone would tumble
listlessly from ancient shores of sand
that felt cool to the bare feet of our forgotten fathers--
Cool like the sand underneath my bare feet,
like the salty wind brushing my scarf behind me
as I skip the stone,
smoothed from months of compulsive fumbling
in my right jacket pocket, across
the timeless face of the ocean.
Ripples cast distant drops deep into the sky to be lost and
forgotten and revived in the chill of the morning air.