I threw a rock into a pond
and watched the circles form around.
The circles grew and spread unbound,
and mixed with other waves they found,
the fish who made the surface bounce,
the tracing of a willow branch,
the rustle of a flop of wings,
the stirring from what lives beneath.
Their patterns mingled up with mine;
they didn’t drown,
they amplified
the wave that went on without me
to echo in infinity
and made things beautiful and odd
in ways I never would have thought,
a complicated quilted chart
of how the strands of time are wrought,
a future made by my own hand
who turned on me to shape itself
and who preferred the willow’s touch,
the fish’s bite,
the otter’s scratch,
who turned a perfect circle dance
to something I can’t recognize,
I can’t describe,
I can’t control,
I can’t make sense of it at all!
It isn’t mine, it isn’t mine,
my sadness made me drunk like wine,
but I can’t take that moment back,
that moment when I threw the rock.
