Skipping Stone

Hey, little rock, I see you there, laying in the road, half covered by the weird, sandy dirt they call ‘road base,’ the foreign composite that’s supposed to combat the mud here, but doesn’t.

Your perfect disc would be coveted by some, by those that frequent lake and surf. It’s the delightful rounded flatness of you and your dark basalt face, that certainly brand you also not from here, a foreigner among native granite and sandstone, brought by the belly-dump trucks whose ardent efforts to subdue wildness, only serve to disturb this place’s feral grace. 

Each time they come to this valley, with their great clouds of dust and their imposing mechanical roaring, I wish they wouldn’t, wish they, along with their road-grader cousins, would never roll and dump and scrape here ever again, wish they’d leave us to the wildflowers growing alongside wheel tracks and to our own rutted peace.

My consolation is that, sometimes, they bring me someone like you, found on my morning walk. I think you might be someone who, if we were somewhere else, maybe wherever you’ve come from, maybe there your beautiful smooth rocky self could enjoy a graceful flight above mirrored surface, could skip once, twice, maybe even three times, skimming cool ripples before dropping into soft liquid. You could settle in amongst your beautifully water-worn relatives, cushioned by silky bottom-silt, content, in your mineral patience, to begin the slow tidal return to shore.

Instead, we meet here, along a dusty mountain road and I’m overjoyed that you’re greeting me within my solitude. You nestle briefly in my palm, a lovely opening handshake, and then slide, sun-warmed into the depths of my pocket. I step into my day, your happy little weight all the companionship I need. 

Come, little rock, let us be friends until such time as we encounter an ocean.