It was there if you looked. If you looked, it was
Everywhere. The pebbles and rocks of the shore
Presented a uniform, glintless grey at a glance,
Even in the brightest summer sun, but children
Invariably made an obsession out of digging
Through the stones for bits of glass. Adults
Were most impressed by the older, thicker pieces,
The butts of wine jugs more than a century old,
From the days when this shore was a dock
Where steamboats picked up ore and disgorged
Passengers, many of whom first stayed
At the dockside hotel (burned down in 1903).
Occasionally, heavy crockery emerged, or
A painted fragment of a vase. The brightest
Pieces, smooth or sharp, thick or blade thin,
Especially the bits of vivid blue, were most
Prized by the industrious kids. One boy
Had worked out a method involving a shovel
And a t-shirt that worked like sifting gold.
He could haul out a basketful of varied glass
In less than an hour. It was a good trick.
One old compositor was so impressed by it,
He imagined the shards and bottle necks
As bones, as a charnel yard under the stones,
And maybe real bones under those, hearths
From the earliest human settlements after the ice.
Now those would be exciting to find accidentally.
He only had to toe the pebbles to catch the bits
Of green, clear, brown, smooth, sharp, blue.
If you composed a mosaic, you could mean
Something significant about all this with it.
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