Sea Glass
By Richard Luftig

 

Half buried in the sand.
I pick it up, rub it gently
over my palm. This broken
bottle now smooth
to the touch.

 

How did it reach the shore
only to be found by me?
How many other lover’s
hands have held it,
caressed it,

 

then passed it on?
I put the shard
in my pocket
but not before
whispering

 

a promise to clean it,
restore its prior sheen
then return it
and keep the chain
alive.

 

 

As Winter Comes

An unfilled wish is the world’s way—Japanese proverb

In this life he has learned to interpret
any form by its negative space like the white,

 

no-there between geishas in a woodblock print.
But what he does not yet understand

 

is how everything is connected, yugen, the one,
like a Japanese vase that holds a single sprig of Jasmine,

 

the warmth of a pear, or how two birds can fly
so close to one another that they seem to possess

 

only one set of wings. He remembers
it being that way with her, like two, white birches

 

washed in summer’s sun. But now
the window shut tight against the winter wind

 

also holds him hostage to all the memories,
and how he regrets, so long ago, seeing the lines

 

etched in her face without ever quite
reading what all the words really had to say.

 

 

Richard Luftig is a former professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University, Ohio now residing in California. His poems and stories have appeared in numerous literary journals in the United States and internationally in The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Europe, and Asia. His latest book of poems, A Grammar for Snow, has been published by Unsolicited Press.