Glass Beach

for Samuel

You and she sifted and sorted the wet pebbles,

searching for nuggets of color like panning for gold.

The ocean must have done the same at one point,

waves like fingers picking broken bottles from the old dump site.

Smoothed and polished by the rolling and tossing,

they tumbled back here in bits no bigger than a fingernail. 

You two filled a cylinder with bold green and translucent white

layered like parfait and took your keepsake back to Georgia.

I don’t know who has it now. Did she take it

with her when she left? Did she set it aside for her child,

a remembrance of first hearing the Pacific Ocean

from inside her mother, wild longing and promises?

Did she just leave those treasures behind too?

Did she scatter them on the ground like stones on a grave?

The thing to remember is, these bits of beauty

were also once just broken-down and ordinary

before the ocean’s insistent caress shaped them into something

people come from everywhere just to hold in their hands.

Writers of the Mendocino Coast Anthology: Transitions 2024, page 74