This middle aged woman
upper chest bared and splotched red in agitation
brings me into her confidence
“You know,” she says, “my grandparents had a cottage
in this small little place. Charlevoix. Have you heard of it?”
I have, driven through it even, stopped to eat a caramel apple
overlooking a small fresh aired harbor
full of little fishing boats, twenty footers
“God, I haven’t been there in years.
I want to go back, but I think I’m afraid.”
She looks anything but afraid, her face flush in the cold,
her thin Midwestern lips pale and unadorned
This woman is much like a Michigan summer
clear and glassy, her pleasures transparently put forth
white capped water beneath a haze-less sun
bony dimple of her breasts beneath her makeup-less face
She and I are connoisseurs of Michigan’s villages,
Arcadia to Charlevoix, collectors of Petoskey stones
We’ll meet in Traverse City
drink some wine on the peninsula,
cruise windows down through the vineyards
falling to bay on both sides, make love beneath the light house
maybe even day trip to Sleeping Bear,
stop off at the Cherry Hut for pie before bed
She smiles the way she would when waking
shivering and protective, shielding herself
though there’s nothing left to protect
“I hear it’s been over developed. I’m afraid I won’t recognize it.”
For she knows, as I do, how fragile Petoskey stones are
how their beauty only comes out under water’s illuminating touch
though the waves throw them and round them
and soon will grind them to sand
slowly working them to oblivion
And who would miss an individual grain of sand?
take the time to scour the world for one rose colored
piece of quartz, drawn and quartered to its original elemental hexagon,
shining beneath billions of brothers and sisters
each holding in its carbon frame their own structural beauty,
So few come under our microscopic inspection
preferring to stun a theoretical divinity with their flurries of grace
I see in this woman’s memory stricken eyes,
little auburn slats coursed through with red
how easy it is for us to fall in love
in the familiar comforts of strangers
hearts that have quickened in the same strains as mine
So, too, will another, beating concurrently but apart
Passions outlive us in the veins of others
in the weary tendons of their fingers
as they peruse the frothy surf, rolling over stones
slimy beneath a patina of algae, searching for one to bring home
before the milky dusk calls this life into past