At first, the poem seems to describe a simple scene: stones skimming across a lake at sunset, leaving ripples behind, while gulls call out overhead. The speaker treats this as a small miracle, and the images are lovely. The path is violet, and the gulls look like clasps on a silver chain, as if the evening were a piece of jewelry.
Then the poem turns inward. "So many questions" suggests a mind searching for answers, and the advice that follows, to choose the smoothest stones, starts to sound like guidance for life as well as for skipping. The ending says that to move beyond the limits of the Spirit, you have to trust that answers are complicated, and learn "to float stones." That is an impossible task, which is the point: a stone shouldn't float, yet it skips. The mood is calm, reflective, and quietly hopeful. The speaker seems to suggest that peace comes from accepting complexity rather than forcing a simple answer.