Gravel

Children love gravel, kneeling to play in gravel,
even gravel covering dry, irrelevant dust.

It's not, "Look what I found!" but the gravel itself,
which is what puzzles adults, that nothing's there,

even beneath, but it's just what Catherine likes most,
that there's no purpose to it, no meaning.

So, that day in the metro when the pickpocket
she'd warned a tourist against knelt, a hand at his ankle,

glowering at her, I wonder if one layer of her mind
had drift through it, "Like a child, with gravel."

That the thief may have been reaching into his boot
for a knife or a razor didn't come to her until later,

when she told me about it; only then was she frightened,
even more that when the crook, the creep, the slime,

got up instead and shoved her, and spit at her face,
and everyone else stood there as blank as their eyes,

only then did she lean against me, and shudder, as I,
now, not in a park or playground, not watching a child

sift through her shining fingers those bits of shattered
granite which might be our lives, shudder again.