a fistful of gathered pebbles there was no point in taking home

Talking was difficult. Instead 

we gathered coloured pebbles 

from the places on the beach 

where they occurred. 

 

They were sea-smoothed, sea-completed. 

They enclosed what they intended 

to mean in shapes 

as random and necessary 

as the shapes of words 

 

and when finally 

we spoke 

the sounds of our voices fell 

into the air         single and 

solid and rounded and really 

there 

and then dulled, and then like sounds 

gone,     a fistful of gathered 

pebbles there was no point 

in taking home, dropped on a beachful 

of other coloured pebbles 

 

and when we turned to go 

a flock of small 

birds flew scattered by the 

fright of our sudden moving 

and disappeared: hard 

 

sea pebbles 

thrown solid for an instant 

against the sky 

 

flight of words 

 

[Margaret Atwood {1939- } "ii. Pebbles" from 'Some Objects of Wood and Stone', in Selected Poems 1965-1975]