Surfaces

Let’s leave the city and its stark, mirrored towers.

Let’s walk under wintry skies until clouds rest

in shapes of seclusion. There’s stillness, 

silvery, along a frozen river

and lost crowns gleaming on the riverbank,

mussel shells. Milky skeletons, 

crumbling and dismantling, a glimpse 

of something wondrous, rare—as if lifting a trunk lid

for illumination of the keepsakes inside—

before seasons shift from snowfalls

to spring thaws and floods sweep away

traces of bone-minerals,

pearly surfaces dissolving

and enriching life unseen. What they know

and what they make endures

in the substance of their rings.

Let’s salute the riverbed’s time capsules

that swallow our darkest impurities in silence.

And when they must come undone,

their release, a wonderful

transformation hidden in silt and sand, is renewal, 

each smooth piece, each sharp memory are gems.

© 2025 Melissa Kalinowski. All rights reserved.