basalt · sea-rolled · the long beach, low tide
a smooth oblong of dark basalt, the size of a small egg, banded with one pale vein of quartz. it is the colour of weather. it has been to two countries since being picked up, and has been carried in five different pockets.
it came from the long beach below the lighthouse, taken on an afternoon when the wind had stopped exactly long enough to admit a person to its surface. you bent because everyone, on that beach, bends. you chose this one because it fitted the hand without asking. the criterion is more difficult to articulate than it is to apply.
it is a worry-stone, though you do not call it that. you turn it without thinking on the way home from work, when the bus is late, when you are waiting for the kettle. its small weight is a way of returning to the long beach without going there. the lighthouse remains exactly where it was; the pebble visits you instead.
field-note · warm in the palm in under a minute. it gives back what it is given.
stone · lozenge · small coin · harbour · ritual