A child gave me a tiny quartz pebble.

Thinking the pebble must have caused some injury to the child’s bare foot, I asked why I had been given the small thing.

The child said one sentence: I found it, and apparently believed that was enough, as she walked away.

I’ve put the pebble on my library desk, along with pipe cleaner creations, a crocheted pumpkin, broken pens – springs, bodies, screw-on caps – the children intend to repair.

Our upstate April
is cold and gray.
Nevertheless

yesterday I found
up in our old
woods on the littered

ground dogtooth violets
standing around
and blooming

wisely….

Hayden Carruth, from “Springtime, 1998”