I threw a rock into a pond
and watched the circles form around.
The circles grew and spread unbound,
and mixed with other waves they found,
the fish who made the surface bounce,
the tracing of a willow branch,
the rustle of a flop of wings,
the stirring from what lives beneath.
Their patterns mingled up with mine;
they didn’t drown,
they amplified
the wave that went on without me
to echo in infinity
and made things beautiful and odd
in ways I never would have thought,
a complicated quilted chart
of how the strands of time are wrought,
a future made by my own hand
who turned on me to shape itself
and who preferred the willow’s touch,
the fish’s bite,
the otter’s scratch,
who turned a perfect circle dance
to something I can’t recognize,
I can’t describe,
I can’t control,
I can’t make sense of it at all!
It isn’t mine, it isn’t mine,
my sadness made me drunk like wine,
but I can’t take that moment back,
that moment when I threw the rock.
and watched the circles form around.
The circles grew and spread unbound,
and mixed with other waves they found,
the fish who made the surface bounce,
the tracing of a willow branch,
the rustle of a flop of wings,
the stirring from what lives beneath.
Their patterns mingled up with mine;
they didn’t drown,
they amplified
the wave that went on without me
to echo in infinity
and made things beautiful and odd
in ways I never would have thought,
a complicated quilted chart
of how the strands of time are wrought,
a future made by my own hand
who turned on me to shape itself
and who preferred the willow’s touch,
the fish’s bite,
the otter’s scratch,
who turned a perfect circle dance
to something I can’t recognize,
I can’t describe,
I can’t control,
I can’t make sense of it at all!
It isn’t mine, it isn’t mine,
my sadness made me drunk like wine,
but I can’t take that moment back,
that moment when I threw the rock.