It was 35 years ago that I first ran away from home to go live at the beach. For the past 15 years, I have never lived more than 4 hours away from the ocean, and for 20 years before that, I was within 20 miles of it. During these years, I have written hundreds of pages of poems and stories about the the beach, and as I sat here for two hours today, reworking what perhaps was one of the first poems I ever wrote as I spent a year going to the beach every day to write, it suddenly occurred to me that I would rather be doing art, using the boxes of material collected on the beach during the two months I spent there this year, than writing about the experience. I’ve already done that, and here is where you can find it: https://judydykstrabrown.com/category/beach-poems/
That URL will get you to the most recent beach poems. (You’ll need to scroll down past this one once you’ve clicked on the URL above.) To see earlier ones, go to the archives (near the bottom of the scroll next to a poem entitled “flip flop”) and select November, 2014 or December, 2014 for older poems.
Please join me in beach combing by taking a walk backwards—as far as you choose to go—through three years of beach poems—reading and looking at what you wish. Some poems you may just walk by or pick up in your hands and then cast away. Others you may examine closely, reading them in their entirety. And some, I hope, you will choose to store away on the shelf of your mind to remind you that you came from the sea and it is always there for you to go back to.
Now, for the rest of the day, I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do for a month and a half now—unpack some of the boxes of shells, stones, bones, sand, corroded metal, driftwood and assorted beach trash found on the beach as well as uncompleted “found” sculptures begun in January and February. Then, I’ll “do” for a day instead of writing about it.
Please enjoy your beach combing today as I’ll enjoy mine.
Here is proof, kids, that I just had my 200,000th view. That is so exciting and you all are responsible for it. Thanks, thanks, thanks. You are what keeps me obsessive!!!
Strangely enough, it looks like just the dry grass burned and burned so quickly that it left some of the greener bushes and plants. I’ve augmented the color a bit so you can see the burned areas, but the green, even though a bit brighter than it actually is, does nonetheless show the green plants untouched by the fire. The fire extended over a much larger area than this, but this was the only place where a road led close enough to photograph it. It appears that the cross and flags were not burned, so I don’t know what it was that I saw burning that looked like a rope of flags and a cross. Perhaps I had a vision…ha.
