These thoughts came to me when I visited the Knockan Crag.

Held in my hand
heavy and cold
this lump of quartz
beyond my imagining
old
forged in fire
aeons ago

A curiosity
my ancestor took
from I don’t know where
I don’t know when
but unchanged ever since
from hand to hand
it went
desk to mantelpiece to desk
down generations
and now to me

Unblemished and warm
my infant hand
that held it first –
it was cold and huge

Sixty-five years
gone in a flash –
my hand’s unsteady
my skin has aged

And compared to this quartz –
whose span of time
sees oceans and continents
shift and change –
all that I’ve sensed
and all that I’ve learned
is beyond my imagining
small
almost nothing
at all