(Massachusetts, September)

Smooth as skin
they strew themselves in drifts
of winking mica eyelids.

The price is right: you could find
the perfect Lucky – white-striped
granite, ground by glaciers, formed
to your hand — as wavelets
turn them over; but for the next
more perfect, and the next.

Pay no mind to those geese shafting
the air, trailing goose gossip
the rasp of salt in the breeze
filing us down

or how flat skipped ones
vanish with no trace.

The rocks reside, hypnotic
fragments of an ancient
birth: indifferent

to all longings
and all tides

MICHAEL H. LEVIN (Washington DC) is a lawyer, solar developer and writer. His work has appeared on stage internationally and in three collections, and has received poetry and feature journalism awards. He is co-author of nonfiction volumes “A Border Town in Poland” (2021) and “Firebird” (forthcoming): www.michaellevinpoetry.com ; www.twopianosplayingforlife.org