sevenly

kitted in crisp licks lacking luster or even creaked handles

where, once in languid splay there skittered and stepped

stones and flat bottomed they skipped and on the water

wrote circles that expanded until crossed and surfaced

with rippled crease the pondway warped into waft and

weave of little undoings, disturbances, in the small

peace where rock least recent stopped there sat the 

seeming still and under it all skipping stones piled

A lake filled with smooth stones and young boys practicing

wrist-flick, stone lift, the sidearm and frisby, the 

careful 

communion of pressed fingers and the warmwet rock

a beach growing out of practice and as the water 

slimmed and hid among the filling pebbles there skipped

stones in the tens and fifteens and, once, in the summer

of 96, Eric Martins counted 42 skips and his stone

spun all across the pond and pegged the far shore

and he marked the spot and kept his rock in his pocket

long after