I just returned from our family beach vacation on the Gulf. Each April, we walk the length of the beach, back and forth each day, looking for shells. Honestly, I can be truly obsessive about the whole endeavor. In fact, get me outdoors, and I tend to collect as I walk: acorns, pine cones, stones, leaves, a host of natural oddities like feathers, nests, and eggshells, and photos, always photos.
Of course, I collect lots of other things, too. (Doesn't everyone collect something?) I am attracted to books, books, and more books, and pottery, ribbon, and writing utensils, to name just a few. Oh, and buttons, which may be a bit of an oddity, since I am not a real sewer.
I believe I choose the things I do for their visual appeal and intellectual engagement; my collections stimulate and inspire my cognitive as well as my creative self. Still, I am trying to limit myself -- one jar of acorns or shells or buttons should be plenty to display and finger and covet, books excepted, of course. I believe Ted Kooser would agree....
Jar of Buttons
Ted Kooser
This is a core sample
from the floor of the Sea of Mending,
a cylinder packed with shells
that over many years
sank through fathoms of shirts -
pearl buttons, blue buttons -
and settled together
beneath waves of perseverance,
an ocean upon which
generations of women set forth,
under the sails of gingham curtains,
and, seated side by side
on decks sometimes salted by tears,
made small but important repairs.
For a jar of buttons even inspired this writer to pen a poem of her own:
The Collector
If Frank Lloyd Wright collected pencils to re-imagine space,
and
John F. Kennedy a turn of phrase to inspire and motivate,
while
Billie Holiday curated exhibits of sounds never heard
before, and
Harper Lee pieced together bits and pieces of our collective
shame, then
Surely, I may sit at my desk, slowly turning a jar of
amassed buttons,
A kaleidoscope of color and form huddled together like sand
in an hourglass,
Some with threads still hanging, remnants of a past
alteration, waiting for
The thoughts in my mind, unclear and incoherent, to group into a grain of truth --
Yet, I am possessive for even this writer’s block belongs to
only me,
Though its value has yet to be determined as the hours pass.
