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On a recent brisk afternoon I took my dad on a walk by Hallock's Bay. In the sand halfway to the point lie bricks, rusting iron bars, & bits of glass and ceramic--remnants of a house that once lived by the water. We wondered quietly who the people might have been. When did they hang to dry their final line of laundry or wash their last dish? My dad went off on his own for a while, then returned with the items in this painting. 

Although the poem by Kay Ryan that follows could be the theme for "wrack line," I thought of it quite strongly on this day.

Chop

The bird
walks down
the beach along
the glazed edge
the last wave
reached. His
each step makes
a perfect stamp--
smallish, but as
sharp as an
emperor's chop.
Stride, stride,
goes the emperor
down his wide
mirrored promenade
the sea bows
to repolish.

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If you try to reach the water's edge of the Hudson in downtown Manhattan, you will instead find a variety of barricades discouraging such efforts. This morning, however, yr painter-correspondent spied a scrambled shoreline with only a railing in the way, & thus was soon nosing about the pilings & rocks. Before long a friendly woman's voice came from the pedestrian path above. "You're looking for stuff for art, right?" Assured that she was correct, the woman said, "This is going to sound crazy, but one day I noticed something in the water & thought, That looks like Jesus' face--so I went down there & picked it up. It was wooden, & intentionally shaped. I said to myself, I have to take that home, and I did--I've got it on a little stand in my living room." She laughed. "So now I can say I found Jesus on the Hudson River. But I'm still looking for Mary."

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this one took a long time.

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O little wren, I am sorry that spring was not kind to you.

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