He said: \"Let\'s throw rocks at the sky tonight
when the stars come out to tease us.\"
So we sat near an old china berry tree,
his pile of rocks, and my pile of rocks,
lounging in the musty smell of dead
china berries mashed into the damp
soil around us: soft, sweet decay.
He threw a smooth stone, hit a limb and showered our heads
with hard yellow berries, gnarled,
juiceless beads reluctant to leave
the branch but drawn by their own
force to the earth.
I threw a flat one. Spinning, humming, it jumped
from my finger tip but whirred away
to nowhere. Soaring, silent arch.
He took a round one, said it felt like a musket ball
in the war, smooth and cold; rolled
it in the palm of his hand, a dark
creviced planet trying to escape its
circular captivity.
Then he hurled it at the sky with a grunting breath
that thrust it on its way. We both
watched the darkness swallow it,
and then a star went out but I
never saw it fall to earth.