Shells

Dirk van Gelder

Shells

Driven from the sea by calloused tides,

How prettily they lie

Stretched out in rows upon my shelf!

I give each shell a name

And feelings to replace it's emptiness -

Poor shells, so dispossessed

From the loud, possessive, passionate sea! -

That I come to pick up

By chance along a long and sandy shore,

Fragments of a coral dynasty

Now banished and uncoiled, then flung

Through the thought-spinning years.

Hy Sobiloff

Here is another example of giving human attributes to inanimate objects - this time written by a man. Mary Oliver has been my favorite poet for this, but I'm on the lookout everywhere. I like how Sobiloff speaks of giving each shell a name - and feelings too. Who doesn't have a little collection of shells or rocks or feathers or treasured objects - plants even - to gloat over and hold and admire, to remind one of moments or places? The fact that the poet here names each shell intrigues me. How do objects become personal like this? Why is it that some people naturally do this with the things around them, and some would never think of it? And then I think of God, for him every little thing, and I mean even the microscopic, the invisible, and the completely unknown to us - is personal. It has a history, a meaning, a place in the scheme of things. He made it, his hand rests on it, he knows when it begins, it's lifespan, it's end. It's incredible. Nothing is lost or disregarded or forgotten. I come back to this thought over and over.