I have a great friend who I can remember spending countless times skipping stones, competing for who could get the most skips, who could skip the least likely stone. The hunt was always for the perfect skipping stone, the fear was we would waste it. And one day watching kids file into their school this thought struck me.
We are all skipping stones
Flung out to sea
by an unseen hand.
A few, round and flat
thrown in a tight arc
through sweet calm air
to a still, flat, surface
waltz on the water,
their long slow skips
ending in a profusion
of increasingly smaller steps
until, an intermiable moment,
seemingly suspended,
they finally disappear,
almost too perfect
to have been real.
But most of those thrown
suffer from a less steady hand
a less skilled touch,
are more imperfectly formed
not as flat, not as round,
misshapen.
And wobbling in flight,
thrown through foul, gusting air
they strike an uncertain sea
rippled, rolling, raging,
and their dance is brief.
Some heroic, some comedic,
all struggling or seeming to,
each reaching a sudden end, gone, immemorable,
seemingly inconsequential.
But forgotten
is that whatever
form their dance,
how long, how brief,
how elegant their skips,
how abrupt their ending,
how skillfully or
awkwardly thrown, whether
battling weather and wave
or embraced by stillness,
when each dance ends
and slips from sight
every stone,
whether perfect
or misshapen,
fell as slowly, as silently,
drifting below the seen surface
until, finally settling,
none more none less,
unknown and unmoving
on the bottom
of that endless,
everlasting sea
The dance floor above,
muffled music below.
We are not our dance.