When he was three, my son's favorite game
was throwing rocks in water. There was a creek
that ran beside the playground; three days a week,
in summer more, would find us at the same
slow pastime. I, big and clumsy as an ox,
would pull the big ones out and make a pile
from which with that miraculous small smile
all children have, Will took the choicest rocks.
With fingers soiled, my pantslegs stained with grass,
my back popping, I crouched there among
the sun-flecked trees and shadowed underbrush,
watched tiny fingers sail their stone. In the rush
of tumbling water, the rock would hang, too long
almost, then shatter the creek's surface like glass.
1 comment:
A very pleasant semiPetrarchan, if I may describe it that way--the octave is two enclosed quatrains. I've written those two. Love explorations. One of favorite poems by Frost is Acquainted with the Night, which fuses the sonnet with terza rima.
Nice working of a simple and evocative subject. What is it about water that makes us want to throw rocks? Nice that you grew into the kind of adult who can record those childhood times.
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