Exchange

by DJ Vorreyer
The Town
Honorable Mention, October 2007
Judged by E. Ethelbert Miller


Strolling a silent beach, air sharp
with smell of salt and fish, I stop
to uncover a hidden stone from beneath

still sand and whispering surf. I turn
the treasure over and over in my hand,
both worn, eroded by time and weather.

Green veins wind across its ochre face
like meridians on a miniature globe.
This moment is the whole world, flawed

and stunning, cold and warm, still
yet churning. Although the stone
reminds me, soothes me, I toss it

back with a flip of the wrist, watch
it skip then sink into undulating
waves of black. One may never know

the trials that etch a surface, which
rough edges worn smooth, which tumbling
journeys now calmed, which longings

brimmed to the lips then receded
unspoken, washed clean like the stone,
the heart, back into the waiting sea.