Hannah: I Threw a Rock into a Pond

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.