i have a billion year old rock sitting on my table
and i once met a bear who was my age
the bear carrying the rock
flat maroon stone the size of a dinner plate
it has waves like it was the bottom of the ocean floor
because once it was the bottom of a green ocean floor
and the sediment got all wavey under the water
then the water left and the bottom exposed
to air became a maroon rock
a billion years later
the rock is on a mountain where
the bear ate through a thimbleberry bush
and shit out some huckleberries
scratched it’s back on the lodgepole pine
left a hair in the tree bark
brown and golden strand in the windy sun
all of this going on by the rock
then the bear gave it to me