You say: Look how each wave
changes the mix of stones
along the shore, how each
wash shuffles up the bits of
granite, quartz, and hematite.
I watch you stoop and bend
filling your pail like a child,
pushing on, ahead of me. But here
no tides run their patterned match,
no rhythm surf slides across long
sand. Here there are only short, slapping
waves, like days, churning stones beneath
my toes, sucking firmness from underfoot.

Yvette Flaten won the Wisconsin Writer’s Jade Ring in 2010, and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Muse Prize twice, in 2008 and 2013.  She works as a bilingual aide in the Eau Claire Area School District. Picking Agates first appeared in the 2002 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets' Calendar, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.