Two Stones by Jeff Burt

Cool, cool is the night. 

I walk the mountain highway

on the narrow path

the perforate white lines provide

trying to recall two faces from college

and failing, as if fog blurs remembrance.

Two stones click like spent shells

in the pocket of my jacket

and recollection takes a choric turn: 

two widows and a lake scrubbed by autumn mist,

their pier in need of repair so I fixed it,

flower and bush gone to weed

so I hoed, hacked and hoed.

They spoke of highs and lows

which no longer came as the slow millstone

of life ground down the years,

pulverized all joy and grief into one sense,

and then these smooth stones, thin stones,

skipping stones, widows worn, effaced,

stones only a lake and skipping

could bring to the shores of joy.

So we skipped.

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Jeff Burt lives in fire, flood, and earthquake county in Central California. He works in mental health, and has contributed to Williwaw Journal, Rabid Oak, Tar River Poetry, and won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.