(click on photo to see the detail)
This photo was taken at the Sandwich Glass Company museum in Sandwich, MA, on Cape Cod. I don't know if this museum still exists, but I hope so. The museum presents glass pieces that date back to when glass was still blown and imbued with the human touch. I like to think that a lantern just like this one lit some sailor's way as he made his way across deck on a Schooner late at night, or gave light for the Captain to enter the day's events in his log while the ship tossed on the seas underneath him. If there are indeed other lives, I'm convinced that I sailed on one of those ships back then. I feel so married to the life of the seagoer.
I just read an interview with Ted Kooser. He was talking about poets taking ordinary things and letting people see them in a new way, a way it didn't occur to them to see before. For me, this lantern brings the scent of the sea, the rushing waves, and sailors dressed in their woolens, braving the unknown for one more adventure before land holds them fast again.
Pris, holding fast as our own adventure rushes towards Florida.
2 comments:
Re, your Ted Kooser quote.
Poetry, is it hard for others to understand or am I the one having trouble thinking abstractly? Is abstract even the word I'm looking for here?
Take David Ayres poem on Cafe Cafe? What's he saying? Or Don's, for that matter.
That's a beautiful lamp Pris, a work of art in its own right; it seems to cry out for a poem to accompany it - I'm sure you could do it!
The final initial etched on it seems to be 'C' - which confirms your feelings about former lives; you and this lamp must have braved many a storm, perhaps narrowly missing being wrecked on the Dry Salvages? :- )
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