Broken Shells: San Francisco de Asis

Thursday, March 24, 2016

San Francisco de Asis

InTaos It is the BACK off the church that is most famous from images by Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams But the parking lot was full of cars and we couldn't get the shot :(

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Broken Shells

I search for postcard-perfect specimens,

oceans moaning in their depths.

Surf belches forth

broken pieces, survivor bits

of crash and thrash, puzzled guesses

at what they were

or what they might become.

I choose fragments for their shapes,

colors, the way they feel in my hand.

See how this one's edge is smoothed,

worn weary before it reached me?

A gray spiral like an eye.

A curl, a horn,

a ripple like a potato chip.

I start to arrange them mentally,

see how they might fit-

an abstract sculpture,

jagged mosaic of my own mind.

At first I fail to see it there,

the perfect shell,

the collector's dream,

as if its former occupant walked

straight out of the sea, a suicide

drowning in air, and left a relic

on the beach. I pick it up, turn it over carefully.

It's so complete.

I put it back.