2 Poems

At the boat launch

I come up empty when they ask why flat rocks skip best. Something about their smoothness

makes them skim. Something about velocity, maybe—some lesson in eleventh grade I can’t

remember because that year, my teacher was so handsome, it was impossible to look at his face.

At the boat launch, my son drops a real clunker with a fat plop into the waves. We’re lucky the

kayaks are out at a distance. Or, they are. Behind us, my daughter gives up, turns her search to

seashells to add to her windowsill menagerie. I’m still reaching for a better answer as I pull

pebbles up for inspection. Velocity—that’s not right. Viscosity. Vivaciousness. Vibrancy.

Vitality—that’s not it either, but that’s the word I was trying to conjure yesterday. I had been

trying to remember what we call being alive and not just living—the word for how you are more

than breath, heartbeat, push and pull of pulse—blood through valves and chambers: the atriums,

the ventricles. The word for how there’s more to life than survival: there’s enjoyment. Energy.

Pleasure. There’s something else we need to be sure we’re doing every day besides just not

dying. Living. Vitality. At the boat launch, my son tries again. He laughs as a trio of ducks swims

our way. They think the stones are hunks of bread. I tell him to stop—it feels mean. He’s

laughing as the ducks quack and quack. I stand at his side so he’ll refrain from throwing more.

He gives the birds his palms to show there’s nothing. It takes a minute for them to turn tail, swim

away. At the boat launch, my son is still laughing; three ducks leave a violent trail in their wake.

Acorns

We leave the woods weighed down with knotted

twigs & stones,

theories of how long it took those trees to grow

so tall.

A thousand years, my daughter says. A thousand

& one,

says my son. At my side, he makes a game

of ripping

off the rough tops, trying to join two pieces

to make

one again. It won’t stay, he complains, pushing

a broken

acorn into my hand. His face tells me

he thinks

I can fix it. I should be able to fix this.

I tell

him when we get home, maybe we can glue

them & until

we reach our street, I hold his hand loose

in mine,

aware of the air between our palms, thinking

that still,

our hands fit together, despite the difference

in size.

Colleen Alles is an award-winning fiction writer and poet living in West Michigan. The author of three novels and two poetry collections, Colleen is a co-editor (fiction) for Barren Magazine and a current MFA student at Spalding University. You can find her online at www.colleenalles.com.