They rocket down to the water

where stones are smooth gems,

opalescent grapes, the eyeballs

you grope from a bowl

in a spook house. The rocks clack

against one another in their hands,

rose flesh separating them from white

bone. Sometimes, they think they hear

ghosts in the clacking. Every glowing

body that’s waded in this river. A

mother hollering into the dusk

for her kid to come home. The voice of

Jenny, the pale soprano, wafting

down from the upper balcony

in church. Crack of a bat. It undoes them

to know stones sometimes speak.