ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Tricia Knoll is an Oregon eco-poet, retired after many years of communications work for the City of Portland. Her poetry collections include Ocean's Laughter (Aldrich Press, 2016) and a chapbook Urban Wild (Finishing Line Press, 2014).
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Paper Money and Snake Eyes
The River Stone You Call A Wishing Stone
You look for secrets inside rocks.
Even mine, that gray one that is run through
with white quartz lines that cross.
I drew a red circle around it on shelf paper,
labeled where it came from
and why I picked this one.
Near the creek, streamside scour,
smooth as re-tumbled desire
washing it in floodwater.
How it fit my hand.
Now, inside a clear box
it rattles on plastic,
no oracle,
no alakazam.
No more magic
than how it fits my hand.
At our house the stones you pick up on travels and carry with you are called Pocket Rocks. Oregon's beaches are full of rounded, washed up basalt stones. A friend of mine recently told me that stones that have white quartz lines running through them are for wishing on. I recently read Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass where she talks about the limitations of English as a language — a non-living thing is relegated to being an "it" in English. In Potawotami, lines between living and non-living are less rigid. Grammatically, stones are living. Which is how I think. They don't need to be magical or even lustrous. The perfect fit in the hand is enough to make a stone a pocket rock.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
