Parabolic

A friend of mine is, I think, a good poet. Here's one of his I like:

On this October beach, as the pale sun sinks,

the mind’s tide slides back across the naked shingles,

and the flotsam and jetsam of some thirty years,

till I am the skinny silhouette of a lad

skimming stones with his dad:

stooping together to look for the best ones;

hooking them into the sling of the finger;

copying the slope of his stance, the swoop of his action;

trying to make them skim, like him.

But sometimes a stone that seems the part,

sits flat in the palm, fits fine in the finger,

will fail at the first

as it slices a cynical slot in the water

and sinks like the stone it was from the start.

Though such a stone can skip

a beat, loving to leap through the falling dark,

tracing its single spectacular arc

above the horizon’s straight, grey axis.

Yet best of all is sometimes when;

One, two, three, four, five sixseveiniten;

it bounces beyond the logic of number,

walks on the water, slides to a standstill,

and winks a watery eye at the frowning sky;

defying density,

momentarily.

Copyright Martin Yates