Chasing a sunset

March 17, 1986

We tore through the late afternoon, Grandmother and I, in that blue Ford pickup, with broom banging in the stake-hole, and tailgate chains clanging. We caught the last radiant burst of color along the stream with flat stones. We skipped stones on its black shallows, flat cold stones fitting perfectly against a warm hand. One I slipped into my pocket and polished. It sits on her mantle, there still with nearly three decades passed. Mary S. Tyler