White Stone Poem

You want to steal this one,
The smooth, white, crystalline
Stone that fits in your palm

Exactly, the color
And sparkle of packed snow
With zero inclusions,

Although it’s just shore rock,
After all, on one beach
Of gravel, rocks, and stones.

It’s smooth, but no more so
Than most of the shore’s rocks,
Small, not specially shaped.

If it weren’t so saltish,
With just the faintest hint
Of some grainy texture

When you roll it around
For terroir in your hands,
It wouldn’t interest you,

Wouldn’t lure you into
Guessing its history,
Sensing where it came from,

From what awful fracture
Far from here, where it sits,
Who knows how long now, shoved

Up the cliffs of the lake,
Rolling down. Sisyphus
Was just the stone alone.