POETRY and Retrospective

The Skimmer of Stones Am I

A sputtery retrospective after four years lying at the bottom of Medium’s Pond

It’s inevitable, I suppose, that after four years, even the very best of our creations — yours and mine — will have settled in the silt at the bottom of Medium’s Pond. Some had skimmed along the surface of fame and riches for so long a season that you’d swear they’d never fall, never lose the momentum of their creator’s heft. But eventually all did. All fell.

You’d think — a reasonable person would think — that just as the stones hurled by the greatest of our creators would resist longer the chains of gravity inevitably pulling them down, so would there be, there at the bottom, a hierarchy of greatness with all the Medium Giants nestled triumphantly atop the masses of Medium mediocrity. The top where the Ashleys, the Grimes, the Obamas, the Dennings, the Wests, the Courics should be — all cozied together. But that’s not how it works. After four years at the bottom, there is a happy apolitical democracy of creators in a hodgepodge of anonymity down here.

And that’s why with a gulp of air to sustain me, I can pluck out the very stone I hurled in October of 2019.

The stone is slimy from its time there. It needed some work. I rubbed off the slime. A few parts I have chipped away at, mostly from its rounded leading edge — so important for keeping it skimming at the surface. I have polished it and buffed it and it is now ready. It’s ready for its glide atop the surface of Medium’s Pond.

Enjoy!

The skimmer of stones am I, and I fancy myself as well, the smooth stones skimmed (imagination lets me, you see).

I, too, am the surface of Medium’s Pond they skim across, or not entirely across, or not across at all.

But if the stone falls short, I do not become the pond’s depth; oh, no, no, not the pond’s depth (even imagination won’t take me there)

Though years and years ago it would. And did.

To be a skimmer of stones, I first must find the perfect stone, for I am not a pitcher of balls, to be given the full game’s span, to peak the perfection of my throw; No. I allow myself but one — one toss to test my form and faith, my existential curriculum.

It must be smooth and flat, of course; but not too flat and light that at first skip my leading edge will lift me up to glide too high, then fall before my enthusiasm’s spent.

The perfect stone will fit the half-mooned slot, between crook’d forefinger and thumb; as snug there and seamless as a duck’s webbed foot. The wrist knows when the stone is right from the body’s deeper knowing. I listen, and watch my wrist test the heft.

And when the time is right I measure the span from water’s edge to the far concave that curves its arms toward me while it holds within its caress the surface of its length and breadth I’ll soon lay the spinning stone upon.

The stone and I have learned to admire the stateliness of skimming the surface of things, whirring past the center’s downward pull; the perpendicularity of the mystery below.

They say at the center, the pond’s immeasurably deep, that the depth of the pond’s mysteriously deep. They say, and I say I must agree, that sometimes a Mystery’s best left to mystify.

But once I thought my courage deeper

than Medium’s Pond could ever be. So I became one with the stone I skimmed, that hummed and skimmed and skimmed again, but not entirely across.

And where it sank, there too I plunged down from the surface of Medium’s Pond down with immortal youth and a lungful of air, down into the heavy-black-deepness of Medium’s Pond.

Whether Medium’s Pond went deeper forever, was not mine to know that day, for fear soon squeezed life from courage and a blur of my spider’s legs and arms sent me scrabbling up the bubbled web to light and air and breath and the safety of surfaces.

For it’s a blessing now to be once — and only once — young and once to test the depths once to dare to fail and once to Succeed in Failing — and in failing, yet survive with a greater knowing that there’s a near infinity of learning from lightly skimming from blithely skimming the safer, monocular surface of things.

Thank you for reading.