Loose stone slides out from beneath boots as we seek
to hold back our weight from the bottom of the ravine.

After a month of no rain, the streambeds are dry,
and the shuffling dust rises around our legs,

like the blush my mother used to prime her cheeks
before going out with my father on Saturday nights.

350 million years ago all of this was covered in water,
a tidal flat where nodules formed under the seafloor.

My mother still wears the sparkling brooch my father gave her
half a century ago. When he was still alive, he loved to trace

the path of water, to search its course for the dull, round rocks
whose rinds might hide something beautiful at their core.

Each month, before we visit, my mother polishes her wedding ring,
the glittering refraction of cut stone. She still flushes at the thought

of his body when she tells me how they made love in the woods
on their honeymoon. Often after a hike in the hills, my father

would take a geode he packed out, place it on a wooden slab
and strike it with a hammer, splitting it in two. On lonely afternoons

his death still shatters my mother, and she calls to cry on the phone.
After today's walk she takes one of his geodes from the shelf,

insists I take it home. On the front seat the sun enters
the grinning mouth of crystals and shines so bright

I have to close my eyes.