What I Believedby Gary Short
Today I brought home a rock
found on the Lake Tahoe shore.
The water has worn
into the rock a face.I hold it in my hand and think back
to what I believed in my youth:
if I skipped a flat stone
across the skin of the lake
the stone would sing the shape of wind
and water.And if late at night
I stood under the wandering light of stars
beneath a certain second-story window
near Dayton, Nevada, and took a pebble
and tossed it up and let it click
against the dark glass, the face of a girl
would appear in the black square above.She'd come out to me and we'd cross the field
through the sweet reek of wet hay
to the neighbor's barn where the horses
were restless with our presence.
It was there that I came to regard
sex as a large, nervous animal.The girl's father didn't understand
how the flowers were wrecked
beneath his daughter's window,
the broken tiger lilies I'd stepped on.
Afterwards, we laughed that he was so upset,
but maybe those bright lilies
stood for something he believed in.In the barn, when I lit a votive candle
I'd brought to light the musky dark,
we saw the powder on my jeans,
vivid-orange where my thighs had brushed
the pollen-laden stems of the taller flowers.
Later, I thought the shapes of shadows
trembled with the pitch of our excitement.In the twisting light of candle flame,
she read the smooth skin
of my face with her fingers.
I wouldn't guess
what time could do.
I think I thought I was already
who I was going to be.
Not knowing yet
that the years would shape, change,
and reveal me.