I brought a stone from the river,
from just below the humpback bridge,
where I once possessed a little cave
under the bare roots of a beech.

Sleek stones, familiar as furniture.
I called them treasure-markers then.

Now they are nameless,
stranger than moon-rocks.

Something lies heavy in my rockery
among stars of something I call saxifrage.

You'd think, if not sight,
then touch would prove it,

but if you made it sweat, if you
could squeeze it like a sponge
until your fingers met, even then
you would fail to know it.

The word assigned it by the water
is not disclosed by its unforthcoming heart,
nor by the flood that silted its rough hide.

In the spate of what we call time's river,
meaning loses touch with stone.

On long school afternoons I'd drift away
from rocky-mountain geography, reach out
left-handed for the steadying beech-root,
lodge in the temple of the stone.

I weigh it here and now, and lay it down.
I've not brought home the meaning of the stone.