Glass Jar | A Poem by James Scott Smith

Glass Jar

by James Scott Smith, from the collection The Expanse of all Things

After the divorce
and in the throes,
I walked along the beaches
of Southern California
sunset after sunset.
I collected stones
and shells that I have kept
in a hand blown glass jar
I found at a rummage sale,
green,
cylindrical,
with air bubble imperfections
as if to suggest
a frailty,
perhaps a looming likelihood of
breaking open at
some point,
though now,
twenty-five years on my shelf,
holding steady
to the end of something,
reminding me
of the beginning of everything.
A shell is one half of an older life.
A stone, a fragment of an older earth,
washed over smooth,
silent and waiting.
A glass jar,
like a memory of experience,
a mere form in which to hold
the artifacts of history,
once living, now
sacrament.

 
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