Green Glass Bottles

Whoa! Seems like only yesterday ... but it may have been longer ago ... you know how time flies when you're having computer problems.

To make a long story short ... and how unlike me that is, eh? ... I got up early this morning (you'll have to take my word on that) ... but my computer decided to sleep in.

I suppose it was out partying all night ... or up watching late TV ... or (most unlikely) reading a good book until all hours.

For some reason unknown to me, it decided it didn't want to let me online this morning. I tried and tried ... and, just as I was about the decide that maybe I should resort to green glass bottles for sending out today's installment, the computer relented ... and here I am (I hope).

Strangely enough, all that struggling brought me to this:

As I've said before, I write quite a bit about writing, not because I've become expert on the subject, but because certain aspects of it remain a mystery to me and are, therefore, so intriguing.

Some of that mystery, an uncertainty, surrounds the process of submitting poetry to others, not just to seek their opinion of it, though that can be valuable, but on the outside chance of its being accepted for publication.

The result of that game, of course, is mostly rejection ... at least in my case. Sheer numbers argue against the chances of any particular poem's seeing its way into print.

Still, we continue the game.

I sit on my island ... writers do so much of their work in that kind of isolation ... carefully selecting the poems which will go out to seek their fortunes among strangers. I compare the process to putting tiny, scribbled notes in green glass bottles, in hope that some of them will be discovered, accepted, published.

Then there's the waiting game, the suspense of wondering how the submissions are being received, and, when the green glass bottles return, the excitement, the anticipation ... still ... about what, precisely, has been their fate with that particular editor.

Meanwhile, there are more poems ... more green glass bottles ... that surging sea upon which so many of our hopes will ride. Oh, what a wonderful game it is!

This one was originally published in Midwest Poetry Review:

GREEN GLASS BOTTLES

If the wind is right

and the sea is surging,

I shall place another poem

in a green glass bottle

and send it bobbing off.

But mainly I shall sit

on the windward side

awaiting those bottles

sent off months ago,

scattered distant dots

nodding now and glinting

in the froth of return,

finally clinking ashore

to my trembling, bony

fingers, fingers fearing

the messages inside.

© 1997

***

Today's word: mystery

Afterthoughts ... in response to your comments:

I'm glad you liked the imagery, Featheredpines. Thank you! I do have plans ... somewhere down the road ... for adding more art, including some of my watercolors, I hope ... to the new S&G page, or others, maybe both ... but I need to get better organized for that to happen. I'll keep trying, though ... I really will.