Field Note on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space

Along the sidewalk a tiny shell—
an omen—opens its bowled form
to my finger and thumb,
dry and far, far away
from an ocean or lake
as though it has traveled by air
to be lifted and homed
inside my pocket. A talisman,
intelligible and mysterious [says Bachelard]
to my hand,
its Fibonacci sequence pleasing to my eyes.
The subjective sense
that my mother’s ghost has left it
in my path
as an anchor for today. The shell
rolls inside my pocket as I flip it
over and over again,
to worry, soothe, ponder,
and plan. To insist,
against my own mind,
that strength is not something you muscle
but something acquired along
the way from habits of retreat
and resurrection; the shell
merely a common object found
on a sidewalk in a non-shell place, yet
I draft mythology for this
to satisfy my need to believe
that my mother has been here all along,
watching my life surface,
guiding as I wander and stray; this is what we do
in every story.
I drop the shell into the ashtray in my car,
turn the engine on.
It stutters happily inside
its new metal cave
with each bump and turn the road takes.