 I'm going to start it off with a poem that is not about rocks. However, it has allusions to rocks. This poem is called Cheekbones. The handsome native. His cheekbones are not chiseled. He is not made of granite. He is not made of marble. The handsome native. His cheekbones are flesh and bone. They have felt hurricanes. They have met tornadoes. The handsome native. His face fathoms all weather. He has withstood hatred. He has withstood other small winds. Okay, so, and the following poems really are about rocks. This one's called Seal Rock. It just sits there. Right where it did before anyone's memory. Every day, the ocean waves crush on its shoulders, but it stays cool, untroubled. Fancyful seals gather on its head. They have parties. They squabble. They make love. Then they go for a swim. Before, I envied the seals. Now, I envied the rock. Black rock, borrowed from the desert, where it absorbed 10,000 colors, where it watched 1 billion sunsets, where it learned to love water. It waits in my palm. Small, cratered, black as space, born of volcano on a dawn without almanac. Borrowed from the desert, where it witnessed a narrative, where it observed many a species emerge and expired. It waits in my palm and tends to my moisture. Will it ever return to the sand and witness the sunset? Surely it will witness mine. And this one's called simply Rock Collection. I seek escape, not in smoke, not in drink, but in rocks I've gathered. None are boulders, fewer pebbles, the perfect mass gorges my two hands. Hardness is my comfort, density my high. The black one brings me to outer space. The purple, a utopian palace. The orange, a feast devoured slowly. The gray, a fairy to oblivion. My calm down is softness, reality is a sinkhole of feathers. But below my pillow I keep an opal. And this is the last one, it's called Ocean Stones. Oldest children of the ocean, they drift on the mother's floor. They appear on beaches alongside infant shells. Beaches, those borders of surrender between sand and desire. Those borders of surrender between inhale and drown. Where stones breathe first air and waves above them push them to cross. As waves above them push them to me. Jewels of Eve, bits of fossil rainbow. Or mother of ruby, or mother of emerald. Perhaps fallen from mosaics of a queen's underwater room, these keepers of mystery older than the moon. I forsake all shells, those delicate tokens favored by beachcombers. Those beauties held fragile, mouths held to your ear. They talk to you, but cannot speak of what they do not know. From wet sand I dislodge the stones and bring them home. There they rest on my window sill, alongside feathers, alongside bones. Ocean stones, no longer ocean wet. Dry, assault crackers. Escaped are their colors, absent is their glow. Still I whisper to them, tell me of oceans, tell me of mysteries. But these are not shells that speak a shallow language. These are their mother's children that do not answer me. A man who breathes only air. Alright, thanks so much. Thanks for the opportunity, Kim.