Poem: Glass Paperweight

Sometimes it’s good for the word guy to stray out of his swim lane and create another form of art. My thanks to Dave and Jeannie Ziemer for a special day, sponsoring me for the glass blowing class where I attempted to capture the feel of the Oregon coast. From my 2023 poetry collection Atmospheric Rivers:

Glass Paperweight

I made it one rainy afternoon
in Lincoln City, Oregon,
near the mouth of the Siletz.

I chose blue, white and gray
granules to represent
the estuary colors

that morning, the surge
of wild surf at the seal
rookery, the Siletz sending

entire logs seaward, fresh
water into the salt, bobbing
on an outgoing tide,

the opposite path
the summer-run steelhead
would be taking later that year,

when the paperweight
would rest on my desk
in Durham, that raw day

in Oregon as blown glass,
the blue, white and gray
ribbons swirling inside the orb

like long-term memory,
encircling those raw, wild
days that formed me.