Help me, sticks and stones.
This one, in my bag,
I picked up in Guangzhou,
eleven years ago,
polished with a small piece of limestone,
and then by the caresses of the years.
Here is a flake from an outcrop
behind the school in Gaziantep,
folded in a square of white paper,
date and place
written in pencil.
I have a short lenght of a branch
from Hongkong,
the occupied territories,
hard and clean, saw-cut
by the municipality
besides an urban stream.
And there is a pebble from the beach
which sometimes I hold,
drifting off to sleep,
dreaming of rivers and mountains.
Help me, sticks and stones.