Between Finger and Thumb

All the little, broken bits
Of nondescript stones, like this
One with blood-red veins obscured

By pulverized sandstone dust,
Fragment smaller than a dime
Or arrowhead debitage,

A half-thumbnail of veined quartz
Churned up with random gravel
By repeated local floods—

What’s a nongeologist
To make of such stochastics?
They say the Earth’s the biggest

Rock in the solar system,
And rocks this small are called Earth.