For the Sperl family, 3/29/21
Sometimes we can plunge our hands into the earth
and find crystals. Other times just rocks,
blunt objects upon which we must write
our own meaning. This was a day of rocks,
when you changed direction with dizzying speed,
grounded then airborne, with us then not in a flip:
we had to write meaning on that, too. How we wanted
to throw those rocks at the sky. Ugly, dumb rocks with no shimmer
or glint. Gray as the ash of burned grass, of wet asphalt,
of a too-long night. Blunt as bad news over the phone.
We kept digging in the earth for something
we wanted to keep, stared at our dusty hands and looked
for meaning, for how to live in a world
that doesn’t sparkle anymore. We cast the gravel we found
like mystics, divining. Each pebble
tried to tell us something,
but we don’t speak the language of stones.
