For years we kept the quartz stones you found,

placed them in rows upon the window sills 

of your room like teeth along a weathered jaw.

After a spring rain in the garden,

past the wood chips at the playground’s edge,

at the gravel inlet of our driveway,

 

you’d rush to seize each alabaster knot,

as if it might sink back under the soil–

the bedrock rippling with that milky droplet.

 

Obvious and common, its hold on you

was charming, although I was the one

to ferry your finds, happy to bear

the clattering pull of full pockets.

 

Our last good hunt before the snow,

we walked the bank of a late fall stream–

two bundled figures floating above

the cobbles like frozen smoke, our bodies

nearly translucent in the clear autumn air.

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KEVIN CASEY is the author of And Waking… (Bottom Dog Press, 2016), and the chapbooks The wind considers everything (Flutter Press) and For the Sake of the Sun (Red Dashboard). His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Rust+Moth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Chiron Review, and Ted Kooser’s syndicated column ‘American Life in Poetry.’