To skip once or twice
any stone will do, any rock
suffice if your arm is strong and angle true.
Even this brick of a stone
barely wide as thick
sausage-shaped like a pig can fly. The trick
springs from the flexed arm
drawn back like this,
no, not like flinging frisbees but sidearm
like slinging snowballs around trunks.
Even this, with some oomph
and flicked wrist, see? one-two- ker-plunk.
Now in contrast this shale shard
so frail, cracker-thin, might sail
off course. To hold the surface is hard.
Ask your aunt about shale
how the back of her head bled
when she was your age maybe twelve. That tale
I hid well for years
while she blamed her own dumb-
luck and a limb overhead for her tears.
See that, by your little toe?
No, your left foot. Now that stone's for skipping,
smooth and flat, fits your palm. If you throw
like I showed you, river's face parallel,
slice the air with your arm
snap your wrist, fling well and yell
or pray, that stone will sing,
twelve skips or more for the other
shore.
Go ahead.
It may reach
it may not.
To play's
the thing.
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