It Is What It Is

                                 For Mark

When I look up to the sky now
And see the lines between the clouds,
Fractal lines, giving each cloud its shape
And identity, think for a moment I see them
Colliding into one another soundlessly forming larger
Clouds or departing
From one another,
Getting smaller
And smaller, until I realize that larger cloud
Is something else than the smaller,
That each has its life and rhythm
Up there in their static dance,
That the rock I kick to my side,
Or pick up and rub first because of its color,
It caught my eye, but then because of its texture,
The way it has patches of smooth like marble
Speckled on the rough surface,
Those pebbles we feel our feet form to
When we step into the Colorado River,
Drench ourselves in the needed frigid waters,
That those rocks and pebbles are not from something larger,
That the grain is not from pebble is not from rock is not from boulder
Chipped away, that each thing here has no history,
That it will not have a future,
That it is what it is, unique,
The way a rock is what it is,
there and standing as itself alone
When I feel its weight, its surprising surface,
Almost like a bone thrown into the river,
The bone of a man who never lived,
In the palm of my hand and,
After laughing at something you say
To me and the crowd of new friends
Gathering away from the perpetual blowdryer winds
Of Needles, California in the summer,
Throw it into the still glass of the river.