Dreamt I picked up a lone,
cool, round stone
from a rocky, bone-
white beach up
north somewhere—
held it firm
in my leathery palm,
felt its heft,
made it warm—
for a moment,
it was special. It was mine.
I had selected it
to the exclusion of its brothers
for some
very important reason.
Then, I waded out a bit,
and I dropped it
with a plunk in the
shallow, translucent tide,
and, before it had even finished
settling to the slate gray bottom,
I already could no longer
tell it apart
from an unfazed million others.
And, feeling neither
sad nor dis-
contented about this,
I shrugged (the tiny, imperceptible
shrug of a titan)
and moved on
down the strand. It was
such a mild feeling. Not strange;
smooth, but not boring—it just felt
easy to forget
and just let
go of having
inconsequentially changed
everything forever.
