Pebbles who miss the water

You know that feeling

when you forget

suddenly

the feeling of something important?

A scarce inkling,

a grieving for something

which may or may not be lost.

I don’t know how to

articulate this.

What I mean is:

there was a time when the palms

of our feet still knew

the stanzas of the dirt

the rhymes of the clouds

and how they shifted through the canvas

of a brotherly sky.

Think of how we could name every plant

and of the way fear

was a blunt good thing

and how air

sharpened and shaped

our impassioned lungs.

Are you feeling, now,

the milky edges of this feeling?

The sun was a bulb

on which we could shovel

everything in our ballooning ribs

and it would always come back up.

Time was a different substance.

Flavors of the earth

rolled about

on our tongues.

The day was a blank space

which our shadows

sprang across

and didn’t touch.

What I mean is:

my sister and I used to collect stones

from beaches and riverbanks.

Now they live in a box

dulled out and roughened

where the sea used to blur the edges.