it's the game we play:
us kids push stones into her wooden arms,
and she creaks underneath the weight
heavy, these souvenirs-
heavy sediment presents
to calcify into an unliving memory,
to be eroded by the ungentle hands of time,
chipped away of their unwieldy edges,
to be chiseled into blind nostalgia-
and she will hold them in kindness,
in her red-chipped paint embrace,
‘neath the hickory trees who throws stones from his glass hill-
our little ruby wheelbarrow,
here before and after us,
empty aside from our limestone memories.