Beach Glass

Among the cobbles of a shingle beach, one thumb-sized stone draws your beachcomber’s eye, too pure a blue to be granite, opaque but somehow promising translucence.

A wave clatters up & wets your ankles. You grab for the stone, now glistening—clearly glass & once a shard, despite the loss of all sharp edges & its transformation from fragment to a whole small world. It has turned & turned in the bay’s watery gullet, that precipitous gizzard full of ersatz teeth. What smaller, softer things has it ground down as it spun?

It dries in your hand now & the light goes out of it. Eager to show the children, you pop it in your mouth & it is a gem again while the saliva lasts.

It rides home in your pocket, a hard candy that never melts & takes days to lose its taste of salted sun.