Riverside Precipitate Flint & Steel, a Poem by CS Crowe

Even stone is part of the water cycle

In a mountain valley, a child skips

Stone to wet stone in search of gold

She finds only granite threaded with pyrite

Basalt and sandstone smoothed for skipping

Quartz like a wildfire, rose and smoke

Slip and fall ankle deep in cold water 

Soggy shoes and socks, shrill scream 

Her mother, a rock slide down the shoreline

Hands under armpits, hawk and rabbit 

Dripping feet inches above the water 

A river smoothed emerald clutched in her fist

In a mountain valley, seventy years ago,

After a long day of laying steaming asphalt

The construction crew sat on the shores

An old man nestled a bottle of lukewarm beer 

Between two stones as the water whispered past

Until condensation rolled down the glass

The old man lay back and drank and laughed

Curls of cigarette smoke rose to count the stars

It was just a job to get through the Depression 

They wondered—would anyone even drive 

This lonely road through the mountains?

How many years before it too was reclaimed by the pines?

Foreman's shout. Distant truck rumble

The shoreline and the foothills remembered

Dripping boots scrambling up the slope  

A bottle of cold beer forgotten among the stones

Fifty years—broken, emptied, worn smooth,

Waiting to feel warm lips against cool glass

Tell me, is it still seaglass if it never reaches the sea?

The little girl and the old man connected 

Only by the way the water sagittated glass shards

Into smooth crystal over long decades 

How could they know, someday, they would both

Be ankle deep in the same river? 

Only the water has changed

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CS Crowe is a poet and storyteller from the Southeastern United States. He believes stories and poems are about the journey, not the destination, and he loves those stories that wander in the wilderness for forty years before finding their way to the promised land.