I’m bothered by how,

in the presence of an endless horizon bottled by boats, a distant lighthouse and hazy clouds,

beside a slow throbbing mass of beautiful blue water clear enough to reveal thousands of rounded stones nestled in its sand,

where walkable beach stretches for mile after mile and bay after bay,

some people look only at their feet

searching for rocks of some particular value or esteem,

which they smuggle into the darkness of their pockets, or toss into reusable totes with aching seams to be stashed in garden beds back home, or left there, forgotten

once the reality of their lack of popular importance is understood.

I’m bothered that we don’t know how to interact with this place except to take from it.

Probably, we all want to build, to organize, to share, to receive.

Probably, we want to know how special those rocks really are, and all they can do. But we don’t.

I’m comforted by my children,

whose only instinct upon finding a stone is to pick it up and throw it as far as they can,

to learn the shape of its splash, the sound of its greeting to the water,

or just to feel the release of sending it off again, and again, and again.