Crown

We shed our city
skin that afternoon
as we tossed rock
after rock
into the murmuring
stream until
there was nothing
but the shallow crack
as the rocks piled up,
and we stretched
our tired fingers
over hard, dirty
surfaces just
to try to
stop the flow.

And we sat
exhausted on
the bank,
red handed
and blank,
dreaming of
wreaths of smoke
curling over
the tops of pines
and lofty, secluded
cliffs locking us
into this ecstasy.

And we fought
the urge that
told us that we
should get the
camera, that told
us to do something
to remember this,
that Wordsworth-light
dread of gleaming
images of ourselves
in apartment complexes,
remembering
the pure times.

And as
night painted
over afternoon
our eyes
saw again, revealing
Joyce’s tragedy
in our dreamy
longing for warmth.