The story of a pebble ...

I was once a part of a huge rock face,
hard, immobile, unmoving, monolithic,
which had seen a million and one days,
weather beaten, resolute and yet stoic.

Until there came once a rain like never,
pounding and fierce, a veritable deluge,
that caused a flood and a river to waver,
and swallow everything, a tidal wave huge.

The river changed its course since then,
and the rock went under the water flow,
chipping and eroding for a season and ten,
sometimes hot and dry, some under snow.

Then one day as the snowcap was melting,
under a warm spring sun beating down,
there was a crack and a noise like grinding,
as a portion of the rock broke, a big stone.

The stone was carried by the river awhile,
rolling and tumbling, it's edges chipping,
loosing weight and becoming more agile,
as it went, into smaller pieces breaking.

Of one of those small pieces I was born,
a piece of stone, edgy, white and shining,
bouncing on the river bed, getting worn,
becoming smooth and shiny, glistening.

One day I ran into a rock on the river path,
like the rock face, which I had been a part,
and through the air, like a bird after a bath,
I flew unknowing, as at the journey's start.

Now I just lie waiting endlessly in the sand,
on the bank of a river that flows so near,
waiting for the errant schoolboy's hand,
that will pick me and move me from here.

Skip me across the water surface so slick,
bouncing, flying as I lose speed, slacken,
till the river swell carries me like magic,
to my destination, in its course unshaken.

That sea in whose arms I want to lie in,
the waters so cold as I fall into her depth,
the release for which I have been waiting,
like a long awaited exhaling of my breath.