Love like a stone

I have sunk to the bottom of my heart.

Like a stone picked up from an old gravel road,

tossed into a fast-flowing stream,

mired in river bottom mud.

The current that washes over me, perhaps

forever, washes me in regret.

I love a woman who does not love me.

You pick up a stone, sun-warm, dry

to the touch, from the gravel road.

You fling it into the rushing stream.

Changed forever, it lies below

the surface, irrevocably altered, but a stone

still, granite, intact, invisible as a soul.

I changed a stone the way love changed me.