crabapples, pinecones, chokecherries, stones:
anything that fits a fist,
makes wrists restless

as if earth was goliath

at the snap of an elbow
the crack of rock on rock
recklessly echos.

a field, freshly ploughed
yields a small pile of boulders;

darryl and i spend an afternoon
knocking deadwood off an ancient birch
until the only rocks left to toss
are the ones that ricochet back at us.

under the trestle we abandon bicycles,
wrest pebbles from the river,
take turns straining slingshots
until our fingers tremble

bottles propped on rocks
shatter with a satisfying crash
though no one dares go barefoot after that.

we skip shale,
reckoning the rings
that hang on a pond
momentarily, like footprints in sand

or pitch thin stones,
arrowhead-sharp, straight up

squinting as they plummet abruptly
to plunge the pond's surface
with a muffled choke,

call that
slitting the devil's throat.

i toss a pop-tarts box
into the campfire, not noticing
a dead battery in the bottom of it

which in furious rebirth
rockets twenty feet
and grazes david's leg, a black streak
on the shin of his splashpants

us sitting on driftwood,
a chorus of holy shits

from the roof of the one-room dining hall,
we lob snowballs
at grayjays swooping low towards the garbage bags

a flock of them speckles a nearby birch,
chuckling at us

and we hit not one,
though when sir catches us up there
his bellow scares the branches clear.