rock me baby
we beach ourselves
blue-skied
warm-channeled
between wee lake
and freshwater sea
we resist currents
to sift sugar sand
our fingers find liths
smooth, fragged,
sliced through
eureka xenolith
rare nugget
that rivals fossil
upheaves in space
where it chooses
to offer itself to us
Stone-sifting is a cherished family pasttime. Wherever there is sand and lakes in Michigan, there are rocks to find. When we find an interesting one, it is passed between us to examine. Sometimes we give it to the person who is most attuned to it. The flat, brown one in the picture is one I found yesterday at the beach with family. The one on the right looks like it could be a xenolith.
Melissa is today’s host for dVerse Quadrille Monday. Melissa wants us to write a 44-word poem using some form of the word xenolith.
Tao-Talk 
So wonderful to go hunting for those polished rocks.
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Bjorn, they have been through a lot to get that polish. I loved having granddaughter be a part of it yesterday but she was fighting the current and could only look at our finds.
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I love finding unusual stones on the beach, Lisa, and enjoyed your rocky quadrille, Lisa! These lines really appealed to me, especially the sibilant and almost alliterative sounds:
‘we resist currents
to sift sugar sand
our fingers find liths
smooth, fragged,
sliced through’.
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Thanks so much for your feedback and happy you connect with finding stones on the beach <3
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So lovely Lisa xo
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Thanks, Catherin!
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I love the restraint of this piece to explain, and the word choices, and the sparseness of it
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Catherin, much appreciated. Glad it resonated for you.
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lith is such a cool word!
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I lith it altho ;)
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:D
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I wrote a piece recently with lots of X words…but xenolith didn’t feature:
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Bravo, for your rock find and today’s quadrille
much love
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Gillena, thanks!
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Cool photo! Love “to sift sugar sands”. Rock sifting would be fun.
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Thanks, Melissa. It is!
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Well done Lisa
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Thanks, Willow!
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I love this Lisa – wonderful imagery – there is such joy and wonder discovering a rock or stone on the beach💕
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Yes! And for as long as I’ve been looking, no two are alike…
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👌
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and shells!
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Such a wonderful pastime involving the family, Lisa! You may strike a runaway gold nugget one day! Great lines Ma’am!
Hank
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Hank, thanks much. May the nugget be with me one day :)
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I like this. Good job Li! 😁
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Stew, thanks!
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Your poem made me want to be at the beach! I like looking for stones as well. I’ve kept a few in my life. I still have one I found with an old girlfriend in the mid-80s.
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Me too. Alas, I’m 700 kms away from a beach and many of the beaches in Thailand and Australia are sandy and I never much noticed the rocks. In the UK though, there was always something interesting to find.
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I’m around the same distance as well in Tennessee from a Florida beach….on those beaches…it depends on which one you go to as far as rocks and a lot of shells.
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Next time you have to travel for work to a place near a beach, please make time to visit. You’ll be glad you did.
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I sure will! I love the beach…and I like it at night as well. Taking a flash light and looking for crabs.
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Dang, Shaun, you’re a long way from a beach. Around here there are lakes and rivers that empty into Lake MI and the rocks are probably picked up along the way?
Questions: do you miss the UK? Do you think you’ll ever go back?
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Glad it took you there, Max. I have a few with special memories attached also.
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Great poem. I’m curious about how the attunement determinations works.
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Thanks, Jude! It’s when a person sees the rock, holds it, smiles, and says, “Ooh!” :)
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Nice words, nice pic and bit of Steppenwolf. The trifecta! Good post Li
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Thank you x 2, Steve. I see you changed your logo. Nicely done.
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Thank you for noticing. It’s all part of the New SFTD master plan
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I kinda miss Lemmy, but the new logo suits you.
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We all miss Lemmy Li. We all do.
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A delightful experience.
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Sreeja, thank you :)
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I love the idea of sugar sand – wonderful images – Jae
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Thanks, Jae. That’s what we call it here because the grains are the size of sugar grains.
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Delightfully described. I am a great rock collector myself and have a house full of them! No lake handy, but I find mine on seashore or river bank.
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Rosemary, happy to hear you are rock kin :) I’ve found them along rivers also and anywhere really, if I slow down enough to notice them. Glad you liked the description <3
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That’s a beautiful collection of rocks. Rocks, like shells, are wonderful subjects for photography or drawing–so much going on. (K)
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K, totally agree. We have mostly zebra mussel shells here and they are tiny and uniform. One of the advantages of salt water over fresh water. Once in awhile a real snail shell will show up but not often.
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Very interesting rocks Li
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Thank you, Sadje. I have a lot of neat rocks like these.
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This is beautiful –
where it chooses
to offer itself to us
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Thank you, Reena. I believe rocks are sentient, but their pace and ways of life is way slower than ours.
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Agree.
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<3
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Lisa, your poem had me at the beach as well. So many fun memories of collecting rocks and shells in the “sugar sand,” as the water would advance and retreat.
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Bruce, the sea brings us so many gifts.
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