Our kids look at the rocks
in their little boxes,
the names hand-printed
on index cards—pyrite,
amethyst, onyx, calcite—
assessing color, weight,
or just some mysterious
rock essence they are young
and primal enough to feel,
and since the rocks are only
a dollar, we say yes,
and the rocks are taken home
and placed on the bookshelf
and immediately forgotten,
which is understandable.

So the rocks just sit quietly,
gathering dust, plodding
through time at rock speed,
as our kids blaze through time
at kid speed in the backyard,
and my wife cooks lasagna
while I mow the lawn,
and in one million or ten
million years the rocks are still
sitting there and we are
the dust covering them,
which is not understandable.