Summer Poem

Beach Comber

I’m a scavenger fisher collector

extremely picky picker

sea shells hunted inch by inch:

perfectly whole and unchipped

or so completely worn out (or in)

that they take on a whole new form

and a new identity

A passerby passes me by like me

looking down along the

line of flotsam and jetsam propelled handily onto the beach 

for us.

Window shopping not making a

committed selection.

I wonder if she, like me,

thinks of writing a poem as she walks

further and further away from her note pad.

Imagining that, like fragments of jelly fish

the words shimmer perfectly now but

may never be pieced together again

fragmented by interruptions like surf

sand, seaweed, sea shells, and syllables

competing for attention.

This is a day the Lord hath made for 

laughing curls of surf and sand (a zillion trillion pieces 

over millennia of ocean life 

and death beneath and all around me).

Who am I kidding? She wasn’t a poet.

She was an escape artist.

Pretending that the shells her eyes never even focused on

could mask the sadness in her mouth

(she never selected a single shell).

I know the solitary venture down the beach

the ambient, wondrous crushing waves

a personal Greek chorus for pain.

It echoes any sad tale you need to memorize

while planning your future escape from something

in your real life.

Am I an escape artist?

Carefully finding only the right sea shells

fragments worn into perfect trapezoids, triangles

and crescents – geometry redefining their

purpose from life to art. From one of many

to one of few from discarded

to chosen from overlooked to obsessed over.

Each perfect piece becoming an ornament

I create

for some future collector, selector, or

window shopper’s brief attention.

So much time and energy will surely

take me far from the worries and pressures of my daily grinding

Sure to be a perfect escape for an artist like me

for a poet like me.

I revel in the - slow - beach - walk -

the few perfect selections

the poem erupting from the journey the

whole new experience unlike any other

beach I’ve combed or man I’ve combed it with...

all wonderfully re-formed by life into a new shape

worn out (or in) to a new purpose

considered carefully then held tight

or maybe just

window shopped.