She does not choose
the flat rocks, the ones
that might stack like bricks.
She chooses a slender volume
of gray sandstone, rounded
to a point on one side,
and balances it on the beach,
point side up. The next rock
is also a misshapen thing … not
at all a likely candidate
for balancing, much less on its edge,
but with gentle fingers
Rachel sets it on its knobbed
end and moves her hands away.
It is not at all straightforward.
What balances, balances
through patience and some odd grace,
and Rachel adds an egg shaped oval
rock into the notch at the top and backs away.
The pile miraculously stands.
Though I try to turn my mind
toward metaphors for love,
there is nothing to get here
except the pleasure of sitting
beside the river, the hatch
catching in our hair, stacking rocks
one on top of the other, one unlikely
sweet spot at a time before they all
fall down.
How wonderful to think of Ye two, together, in balance.
So wonderful to be together! I want to have her live here forever
Ohhhh, but you’d have to have me too. For I wouldst swain without the other half o me restless Hart.
Sometimes it _is_ just about balancing rocks.
…but then, what follows immediately after your admitting your failure to find metaphors for love, is such a precise depiction of being with a beloved—“one unlikely sweet spot at a time…”
Wise and sublime.
I love it when it arrives at the part where Rachel adds the egg rock and backs away, all the expectation of the poem are balanced there too. And you bring it to that eventual fall at the end, which is right, I think, but you suspend that moment so well until then.