Skipping pebbles - julia kinney

The land and tree lines sway up and downhill; the stream lying low- almost still-

shallow and layered with pebbles.

A warm, fresh breeze fills the air,

and the quietest chatter is heard from hikers a mile away.

Sneakers kick up dirt and I stumble along roots

as the path leads downward, and the gigantic eastern hemlocks 

create a clearing for the stream to breathe.

I meet the stream, lean down and feel some pebbles

with the tips of my fingers before choosing one that is flat and smooth. 

As I take my stance to skip the pebble,

         I remember.

My father threw this same pebble into    

the stream. 

It skipped three times, leaving ripples   

in its wake. 

That moment of time replaces my own,

the past resurfacing in a way the pebble never could. 

Here, watch this.

See how many times it skipped?

You try.

           Plop!

My pebble becomes sunken and forever lost from my grasp. 

Though I remember this feeling in a state of deja vu,

I do NOT remember

if this memory is the reason

I am so connected to the fluid waters of the world. 

Or the trees, or the soil, or the wild red raspberries 

as bright as the ones he would grow in his garden.

I do not remember why I look for these things- for Nature-

everywhere I go

and why it allows me breath while at the same time constricting my heart.

Can a father no longer around have such an effect on a child grown into their twenties? 

Is absence that much stronger than presence?

Why does he pop up in memory, the synapses of my brain firing away without care?

A man that my eyes and brain promise is looking back at me in the mirror,

the image as still as a stream, rippling only when I skip my fingers across it like pebbles.