Green Glass

There's only one place,
So I'm told, where green glass
Appears in the world.
A place so foreign to me,
That it hides like sand
Sifts through my fingers.
A place where two cultures,
Deep in tradition, clash with a roar.
Kashmir, I cry, why, oh why
Do your mothers shed tears?
Why, oh why do your mountains
Cringe away from the pain?
What's this? I wonder
As my searching seared fingers
Blindly find glass—
Precious, pretty green glass—
Fused from the sands of your folk.
Fused from the tears of two cultures
At war with their fears.
Fused from dreams so dashed
They shatter like fragments of glass.

Inspired by a poem by Sharon Olds during Elizabeth Austen's workshop at Poets in the Park 2005. Someone once told me green glass happens only in a glassblower's furnace … and at ground zero. I struggled for years to figure out how to use the information, how to speak to the horror it conjures, how to lament the potential for suffering. In Elizabeth's final exercise, this burst free, unbidden and unexpected.

Copyright © 1998-2005. Michael Quin Heavener. All Rights Reserved.