A Few Fidgetglyphs on the Middle Sand of the Middle Beach

North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

Geof Huth, Blind Pass Park, Manasota Key, Englewood, Florida (18 April 2008)
On three different days during our stay in Florida, I made it to the beach, and each time I was there I created sandglyphs, short poems, usually visual, carved into the middle sand, which is the sand between to wet sloppy sand right at the shoreline and the dry sand farther up the beach. Only the middle sand can hold a letter in its belly. Tonight, I’ll just present a few of these sandglyphs. Maybe (so maybe not) I’ll present others of these some other time.

“the angel serif,” Manasota Beach, Manasota Key, Englewood, Florida (16 April 2008)
On the first day of beaching (which included a little bit of beachcombing), Nancy and I walked Manasota Beach. Occasionally, I would stop to scratch a glyph into the semiwet sand with a shard of a seashell. This little one I thought cute, but you’ll note that the trip it sends you on is short and quizzical. Think on it, but don’t expect great revelations. A sandglyph is a sandglyph.

A Line of Fidgetglyphing, Blind Pass Park, Manasota Key, Englewood, Florida (18 April 2008)
A couple of days later, we went to the beach at Blind Pass Park. Because this beach is the one between Manasota and Englewood beaches on Manasota Key, my father-in-law calls this Middle Beach. The first day we were at this beach, the tide was perfect for glyphing. I had huge expanses of sand to work with and few people in the way. The sandglyphs I created lasted for hours. Also, since I created so many of them—yards and yards of them—some people actually stopped to read them. It was a little poetry exhibit on the beach. This poem above is part of my first multi-stanza sandglyph.

“searead,” Blind Pass Park, Manasota Key, Englewood, Florida (18 April 2008)
But a better sandglyph is this one. It incorporates articles on the beach into its composition—and as part of its inspiration, and it doesn’t aspire to be anything more than a pwoermd cut into the sand.

“W’VEWR’CK’D,” Blind Pass Park, Manasota Key, Englewood, Florida (19 April 2008)
This one poem from today’s final trip to the beach is about what I want a sandglyph to be: short, sweet, and a little dense. It would also be good to include a little more visual activity in the poem, but this trip did not engender much in the line of sandy flourishes from me.

Tomorrow, we fly home, and we’ll make it home before midnight if I’m lucky, so I expect to post from the Detroit airport.

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Below the Bar
Happy birthday to Ed Baker, who turned 67 today, remains about as active a creator (poet, painter, composer of blog comments) that I can imagine. May we all be doing as well as Ed when we are his age, not old, but seasoned, a bit better than weathered.

ecr. l’inf.