Happening upon the Exploding Sand Sculpture Competition on TV

Found: the proper distance
�Handprints the wind wiped away
�Small cone piles where a bird claw raked the tension loose
�Like crumbs

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From a swath of sand, preimagined
�History’s sputter, or granules of myth, rough in places
�Rough
�And detailed

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Color of tawn and if it rains, leather
�Color of itself core to surface
�Color of reuse
�A seablue horizon floats its way up

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Cyclops, Einstein, Planet of the Apes, Indiana Jones
�The lone woman Betsy Ross sews on Gallileo’s stars
�Map of narrative
�Chunks, clumps, wads, pieces, specks

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Eons of drafts of sand / earth of sand / sky of sand
�Deeded sand
�Air / sand
�A smithereen lands at my feet

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Stand back when the shoulder rounds
�The corner rounds
�Too close if what you saw before / you saw
�Meant anything

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�Denise Bergman is the author of Seeing Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life of Helen Keller’s teacher (2005), which was translated into Braille and made into a Talking Book. Her poems have been widely published. She conceived and edited City River of Voices, an anthology of urban poetry, and she was the author of Keyhole Poems, a sequence that combines the history of twelve specific urban places with the present. An excerpt of her poemRed is permanently installed as public art in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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