Poetry: “The Stone My Grandson Gave Me”

Paul Mariani

The Stone My Grandson Gave Me

Bright yellow, like his hair, and shadowed, the one side
flat so it could rest here on my desk, a simple fragment
of something bigger, something it seems now heaven-sent,
waiting for us on the sidewalk, where his blue eyes spied
it as we strolled together down the town’s one wide
maple-lined street toward the old brick church, where he meant
to race down the length of the muddy grass embankment,
then charge up the neo-Georgian porticos and hide.

Jacob’s angel, I thought to myself, being of that mind
that can glimpse—like you and you—the wondrous world around.
For you, he shouted, running up ahead. Call it—what?—a kind
of currency? Or—better, maybe—something the very ground
had yielded up this day, anno domini, which the kid had signed:
a thing turned diamond after all these years, as it waited to be found.

  • Share
Most Commented

September 18, 2024

1.

Understanding Anti-Semitism from a Neglected Film and Novel

A little known 1940 film starring Margaret Sullavan, Jimmy Stewart, and Frank Morgan is perhaps Hollywood’s most successful attempt to dramatize the nature of antisemitism and the Nazi......

Most Read

May 30, 2018

1.

The Case for Colonialism

From the summer issue of Academic Questions, we reprint the controversial article, "The Case for Colonialism." ...

March 29, 2019

2.

Homogenous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty

A study on the partisanship of liberal arts professors at America's top universities. ...

October 18, 2023

3.

Did American Police Originate from Slave Patrols?

The claim that American policing “traces back” to, “started out” as, or “evolved directly from,” southern slave patrols, is false....