Falling off a rock

by Dorothy Johnston

This rock I fell off when I was seven –
so I told people –
but it never happened.

The image is stronger than the fact.
I can see the small girl climbing and then falling.
She does not make a sound.

It seemed a thing to tell people,
not claiming possession,
but pointing to the way life was.

As a young woman
I rested with my back against the rock,
having run away from hard things.

I sat staring out to sea
and listened to the climbing and the falling,
though the child I was never made a sound.

The small flurries that the sea makes
when the tide is going out,
the wind patterns on the sand,

in the shallows, where the water’s golden,
in the carelessness of climbing and then falling,
are the memories a child lay down.

In the carved places above the rock’s bright ankles,
in the sea filling the hollows behind its knobbly knees,
in the coming and going and indifference to children,

are a woman’s memories.
A child lay sprawled and silent
on the sand, as the tide came in.