SEA GLASS
I’ve never sat well on a pedestal.
My glassware’s always been flawed.
I was a chipped vase, tossed out into the waves.
Some call it the sea of despair. I don’t know.
All oceans have their storms.
Washed up again, I’d been transformed.
I am sea-glass, beautifully beaten, battered, reformed!
The sea doesn’t discard refuse on the shore.
She gives gifts, not garbage.
Those broken shells and seaweed are the stuff of life.
Recovered as a treasure with new value,
Back on the pedestal I went.
They wanted my story, for the blood and the glory,
But they didn’t want my heart.
An old piece of battered sea-glass is no object of abject art.
Decisions were made.
They don’t want broken things on their dais.
Mirrors are for bathrooms, not temples.
They want perfection with wax covered cracks.
Sincere in name only.
Back onto the sand I was thrown.
I can only wish them well as I lay here,
Waiting for the next cresting swell.
It will come soon enough.
None of us stay on the beach for long.
j.w. McKinleyville, 9/8/25