Memories

Saving them
like tiny pebbles
from the local beach
worn smooth by
ceaseless motion
and reflection,
by time and veneration,
the recollection of
our water and its
weight upon them all.
Many fall beneath the sand
forever missing to the shore,
and stranded there,
neither gathered nor
strung together nor
moored and reaching life,
their traces never found
within a treasured artifact
that drifts about
the empty spaces
of our lives lifted
by our wandering,
and fetches up at last upon
our neck or wrist,
and shared with others
likewise decorated
with the smallest sampling
of their treasures
for anyone to see;
as it is in the wearing
of every twinkling
instant of our time
that the sharing
makes it real,
and bearing from
its sender
a little longer
to reveal what we
remember of ourselves.