Sorrow is a rock I carry in my pocket. The weight of it drags everywhere I go. Along sidewalks and city streets, in and out of cafés, bookstores, banks, and bus stops. No room for baubles or shiny bits, only this heaviness fondled absentmindedly until the burnished egg of it rubs holes in the lining and all my pockets are patched.         Sorrow rocks me as I roam through rubbled outskirts, past river, headland, boreal, taiga toward the dry horizon. This barren shield of flint and mineral knowledge. Here I balance sorrow in my palm. See it multiplied in shards and pebbled paths that lead me to the rugged cairn raised up in balanced brilliance, marking the way. What has called me now for generations or maybe only minutes. Plant your sorrow here, where we too have been.         I lay my sorrow down, on this stone-stacked altar that points beyond, where lichen sprout in random flares of beauty.