Wish Beach

At the edge of tonight’s retreating tide,  
I find a stone ringed with white  
luck. Ancient superstition, the circle.  
The puzzle: to find its beginning.  
The solution: endlessness. Flaw  
of crystal embedded in a marble heart.  
Along this shore, rock after rock is banded. 

I was taught these rough gems grant 
wishes and wishes come in threes: one  
for the world, one for another, the last, 
personal. I close my eyes, breathe, 
cast my piece of marble-sized earth. 
Listen for the splash, the hush.  

For the greater good, I choose 
borderlessness. For another, a body 
remade, pain free. For myself,  
the old trick of more wishes. To come  
again and again to this beach. To discover  
over and over the boundless secret 
of a pebble’s throw of hope.

JOANNE M. CLARKSON

Joanne M. Clarkson’s fifth poetry collection, The Fates, won Bright Hill Press’ contest and was published in 2017. Her poems have appeared recently in Louisville Review, The MacGuffin, Paterson Literary Review, and on the Poetry Northwest website. She lives with her husband in Port Townsend, Washington. Website: JoanneClarkson.com.