raking my fingers through

raking my fingers through pebbles and crushed shells

on my knees on the burfoot park beach the other day

several feet away from my daughter doing the same,

I thought about how much collecting beach glass

turns periods of patience into multifaceted tiny gems too.

who knows how long it will be until we or we and others

engage in this activity again, there or somewhere else,

so in the interim we will stretch out then break off

a fragment of time whose contours can’t be predicted

and whose coloring by circumstances yet to come

will be unlike any other on the light wave spectrum of our lives,

and the roughness of those aspects will be what

will give these crystallized swaths of fallen hourglass sand

the uniqueness that is the requirement of true beauty.

these exquisite stretches of waiting get buried, though,

in the accumulated grit of everyday living,

then polished by the constant wash of time

to the point that at a glance they don’t stand out in the landscape

because their translucence leads us to look right through them.

just as it takes a mason jar on a sunlit windowsill

to properly showcase and juxtapose all the bits of beach glass

we’ve gleaned from many casual scourings at the edge of the surf,

so does it take the rigid container of this poem here,

illuminated by your forming thoughts,

to make a museum display out of all that is yet to occur

in order for each of our memento troves to fill up to the top.