Frame It, Feel It, Pass It On

Aydin knelt where creek pebbles shone;
The pocket frame rested in his hand alone.
One tiny picture showed three empty places.
“Order by size?” he wondered. “Or by how each feels?”

He framed one smooth pebble, cool and round.
“Comfort,” he named it, without moving from the ground.
Frame it, feel it, pass it on—
The frame traveled; Aydin stayed where he belonged.

Beside blueberry trellis, Emmitt looked through.
A curled wet leaf filled the frame’s small view.
“Courage,” he said, “can be light and thin.”
Its size did not decide where the clue fit in.

Comfort, then courage—pass it on.
The frame moved beyond barn loft pulley in the soft light.
Lillian framed one clear bead on a reed.
“Noticing comes last because it tells what we need.”

The three clues pointed back toward creek-edge shade:
Not to stack, glue, tie, or build with what they had.
The smooth pebble stayed down. The curled leaf stayed near.
The clear bead stayed bright in the barely moving air.

A tiny snail rested under a curled leaf beside the creek shelf.
No hand reached toward it; no frame crowded in.
Three children held still, though no craft could be shown.
Their finished work was leaving that small life alone.

Then the snail shifted once beneath its leafy roof.
Its shell touched one pebble with a sound almost too soft:
tik.
That tiny tap ended the rhyme.