Glass Beach

by Charles Looney

Not a beach for drowning or
loving strolls. Lava rocks
like fractured tusks protrude
or lurk beneath the water’s surface.
A body doesn’t sweep to sea
or lilt upon a sunny tide
but bounces like a pinball
from tor to jagged tor
along the fifty yards of grimy sand
until the broke remains
are spat back
onto the dreary shore.

Yet here the polished gems of glass collect
themselves from miles and years of
ocean wars. Churned and tossed and polished
shards of Blackbeard’s kiss
or the cupboards of Atlantis swirl in
little eddies and great pools, scrape with
crabs the bottom of the sea, leap and dive,
dive and leap and soar until the cutting
edges dull, the sharpness altogether
disappears, and the roundness of water
takes their shape.

Black sand it’s called but gray’s
closer and small, darkened gravel
closer still to some.
Beach because it lies at the ocean’s end and
flat between the rocks and cliff.
In all the million miles of water
to choose this rough, this ugly
strip of smelly sand to birth the
tiny jewels of white and green, amber, blue
and red, crafted and ocean aged
nature plays a discord with herself.
Tumult sprinkled on a thumb of sand.