Beach glass.
Is there anything more beautiful?
Of course there is.
But that’s not the point…
I love having little piles and jars of it scattered about the place.
Love it so much I’d like to tile the bathroom floor with it, the kitchen countertops, or maybe line the the inside of my car with a cool green mosaic.
Feels like good luck whenever I find some.
~
Matilda Magtree 
Thelma also loves to collect seaglass. The beach closest to us at Cedar Dunes National Park is a great place to walk and find it. I wrote a poem about seaglass that Anne S. really liked. You might appreciate it too.
Seaglass Ghazal
Blue seaglass gels into brilliance
of the in-between: air and water as condensed
as an icy lozenge. A driftwood tongue washes
up from seesawing consciousness.
Brown seaglass might be solitude’s monocle, magnifying
the leviathan within, having swallowed
whole a culture of deliverance springing
from the pubic tangle of eel grass below the dunes.
Green seaglass gives the illusion of beading the tidal
hairline, swept in by invisible oceanic wheels.
But it is the colorless glass (a smoothed
platelet in the bloodstream, a glint of fever
reinventing miles of beach as sunburned firmament)
that returns to the grit it came from, a hybrid
of message and bottle.
Steve, this is beautiful. How nice of you to offer it up here! Gorgeous imagery. You know how I love colours… and I especially like what you’ve done with the ‘colour-less’. And “solitude’s monocle”… Oy.
I want to print this out, add by Steven Mayoff, put it in a pretty frame and hang it in my kitchen. May I?
By the way, did you by chance talk to Anne about her collaboration with John Berridge a couple of years ago? He did a series of some 50 or so photographs of glass and she wrote poetry to accompany the pieces, then the whole was exhibited as ‘Hour Glass’. Her poem, ‘Book of Beginnings’ is stunning on its own, but in conjunction with the various coloured glass pics, is twice as powerful.
I can send you the poem and info on the exhibit if you’re interested.
Thanks again for ‘Seaglass Ghazal’. I see on FB you’re having some fun with ‘form’ these days… It obviously suits you.
Print away, C. I’d be honored to be hanging in your kitchen.
Anne and I spoke of all kinds of things, but not that collaboration. I do remember you sending me some literature (a pamphlet of the exhibit?) about it. I’d love to read that poem.
During my meeting with her, Anne suggested that I expand one of my poems, which was originally only a page, into something longer. In the course of thinking about that I came upon a form called the pantoum, which I suggest you look up on wikipedia because it’s a bit complicated to explain. Also check out the links for some examples of the form at the bottom of the page, in particular poems by Donald Justice and Carolyn Kizer.
Anyway, I decided that this would be just the form to try out in expanding this poem. My concept is 5 connected pantoums and so far it seems to be working well.
Well, well, I’ve learned something wonderful today. Though ‘learn’ may be the wrong word. Let’s just say I’m more confused. But in a good and happy way…
Never heard of pantoums but I think I like them. I certainly like Carolyn Kizer’s. In fact, I may very well like Carolyn Kizer. Must look her up.
Delighted to know you’re writing madly away. That can only mean good reading to come for us all…!