"The Stones in the Stream"
A poem about the creativity of children
Welcome back to The Little Island🏝️. I’m Charlie Shifflett, the sole proprietor and sometime resident of this, here, clod of dirt in an imaginary ocean. In this edition, I’m sharing a new poem, along with a recorded reading and an accompanying watercolor illustration. “The Stones in the Stream” will appear in an upcoming collection of poems and essays — my first new collection of writing since Accomplices (published in 2016). Thanks, as always, for reading and supporting my work!
“The Stones in the Stream”
A poem by Charlie Shifflett
She has crossed the stream Barefoot a hundred times before, Like a high-wire artist performing for an Audience of robins and tree frogs; Like an adventurer tracing a dotted line To gems and coins in a buried cedar chest. But as a distant thunderstorm rattles the pines, It strikes her (not the lightning, thankfully) That the stones in the stream Could also be Plates on the back of a stegosaurus Nibbling on ferns overhanging the shallows; Fragments of a far-flung planet, A universe of secrets cold to the touch; The ridges of an ancient temple Swallowed by mudslides and rising seas. She realizes in a private epiphany That the stones beneath her painted toes Are knobs to a thousand portals. She needs only to Press her calloused feet on their weathered faces And stare beyond the crystalline surface That hides their Shapeshifting forms below.