Still Noticing, Collecting (Detour 13)

We spent the third weekend in January at the coast, an extended family tradition--long walks, seafood, puzzles, wine. Walks remembered and compared; stones retrieved from tide pools, examined, mulled, returned-- dropped gently, perhaps, or absentmindedly; or flung full-armed into the further surf, that pitcher's arc none of us ever truly mastered. Remembered others' beach traditions (blue glass planted for future harvest, after it might be polished by a winter's waves) and thought about collecting, noticing-- why we bother, what it means.

From Detours (Burnside Review Press):


13

If you throw blue glass into a field, it disappears like a stone in water.
Waiting, if the edges are sharp, for the unsuspecting foot. If it's beach
glass, already closer to a pebble than to the bottle scrap it was, it
settles unnoticed between roots, slipped by a mower blade, perhaps,
months later, or left alone, a single rock that isn't, where you think
it's not. But if you hold it to your eye, you can't see through--it's not
a lens, only a piece of old glass someone picked up, on an island in
Maine, say, on vacation, or inadvertently with the treads of a shoe, or
somewhere in between: seen inadvertently, then saved.

I'll be reading from Detours at the third annual Wine and Word Celebration at Winter's Hill Vineyard on February 16.  The tasting room is open 11-5; we'll have readings and word tastings on the hour, starting at noon. Also participating are Karen McPherson, Micaiah Evans, Cole Danehower, Eric Lindstrom, Jim Gullo, and Pedro García-Caro. Books, wine, and good company!