Rock on

My garden has rocks from some of the places we've traveled - Cabot Trail, Tofino, Victoria, Wicklow Beach, Long Point, Grand Bend... and now Corfu.  No stones from Venice, although I hear tourists sometimes dig up the cobblestones in the streets as souvenirs.

I've placed the Mediterranean stones at the edge of the pond with the other finds.  Smooth pebbles, fragments the shapes of hearts, and some that look impossibly soft.  Creases, nicks, folds, wrinkles, pocks, to mark each with a unique expression.



When we go gathering these treasures the e.e. cummings poem  'maggie and millie and molly and may' often hums in my mind.  The last four lines, especially:




maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea