In Coast Spring Items
by Hanz Olson
Net some entire savage trampling -
tan words in song provide their company, and
I ' m n o w s u r v i v i n g nestled pairs
fallen aground, a windy mountain's good
intentions, sweetly crumpled walks over
tangled in long lawns.
Care of stuff lunches over spring's dream change
dead-leaf rhymes.
"Here," I said, "I ' m d o i n g
w e l l to murmur out this morning's
short-shake time hearts.
Stop-socket snow heats no words and still you cry.
Experiencing intrusion notes to
play houses snapped, heap of rubbish, collections kept intact, plates ripped
out in gritty clarity.
Pinned and braced shelving stacked, scraps and shards survived by climbing,
whose body has not been found.
Sands are homeless and railing at its edge, as the sea pulls away from the coast.
I’m thinking these images may all be of sand on a beach. Substitute the word “sand” for “savage.” Sand sings in “tan words.” Sand can be a “company” of particles or “nestled pairs.” Spread-out words imitate spread-out sand. Sand may derive from “a windy mountain’s good intentions”–erosion constituting the sea bottom. Sand may be “sweetly crumpled” and “tangled in long lawns,” or beaches. Sand can be “stuff” whose “care”–by the wind and waves–“lunches over spring’s dream change,” feeding on shifts of weather and temperature. It may “murmur” as “short-shake time hearts”–particles quickly reassembled during the flux of a “morning.” “Snow” may stop, fill in, its sockets, “and still” the sand will “cry” in the surf. “Play houses,” “rubbish,” “collections,” (castles?), even “plates” may all refer to sand, or at least a human beach environment. “Gritty clarity” comes very close to sand’s description. The wind and waves can build sand into semi-permanent formations: “pinned and braced shelving stacked, scraps and shards survived by climbing.” Now we come to the point. Sand, for its prevailing presence here, is a “body (that) has not been found.” Essentially dispersed, it cannot come together. The word is mentioned for the first time, but in the plural, “sands,” characterized as “homeless and railing at its edge” when abandoned by the sea at low tide or in momently withdrawing waves. Sand in turn is an image of us, humanity, a huge disparate group that can be brought together, connected, shaped, but ultimately remains discrete, particular, homeless, and alone, crying, railing at its desertion.