Sandra McPherson: On the Abundance of Shell Hinges after a Storm

Half-self will be plighted to half-self

forever, junked rainbows joined by tar,

as long as a similarly tossed,

chipped person cases a shore like this

and counts its hinges, the responsible

part of toughness.  How have these ligaments

held, for their umbones, each life’s intention

of never letting go?  A jacket

may have pocketsful, but who will ever

own such an unfailing togetherness gismo,

care-device whose squeeze is slow

to lapse?  No binding is harder

to imperil than this we’ve come down for;

for when wholeness and life shall pass,

inseparability springs with recall

while stairways fall from the cliffs. 

                        ======

Author’s Note: Poets who examined the published version of “On the Abundance of Shell Hinges after a Storm” had an urge to disassemble it and reassemble it like beachcombings in different designs.  For them each line was like a shell on a beach.  Here is one example, by Lee VanDemarr.

How have these ligaments held,

            in their umbones, each life’s intention

            of never letting go?  Half-self will be

            plighted to half-self forever,

            junked rainbows joined by tar,

            as long as the similarly tossed, chipped

            person cases a shore like this

            and counts its hinges, the responsible

            part of toughness.  Stairs fall down

            the cliff.  Wholeness and life shall pass,

            but this inseparability springs with recall.

            A jacket may have pocketsful, but

            who could ever own such an unfailing

            togetherness gismo, care-device

            whose squeeze is so slow to lapse?

            We have come down for this to last,

            the binding always hardest to imperil.

Feel free to do the same.

---

First published in Threepenny Review, Spring, p. 12.1990 (without the Lee VanDemarr version).  The two of them subsequently published in Certain Uncollected Poems, Ostrakon Press, 2012.