nuances spoken
delicate change – cloud and blue
and flimmering sun
On a tip, the wife and I visited Sands Beach at Port Royal, South Carolina.
As the crow flies, its 13 miles from where we live.
To drive there, around the swamps and marches of the low country of South Carolina, its a 40 minute, 27 mile drive.
It is located at the southern tip of Port Royal Island where Battery Creek breaks off from the Beaufort River a few miles above Port Royal Sound.
The beach has a walkway along Battery Creek and a 4 story observation tower.
The view from the top of this tower helps you understand the meaning of ‘the low country.’
The day we were there, the water was still and blue and the surface reflected the sky and clouds in a way that defeated use of any words in the my dictionary.
I was reminded of the writing of Jenny Lawson who in her book, Furiously Happy, used the word, Concoctulary, which she footnoted, saying ” … a word that I just made up for words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist.”
Ms. Lawson doesn’t just invent words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist, she made a word for the words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist.
Concoctulary.
As Ms. Lawson writes, “… It’s a portmanteau of “concocted” and “vocabulary.” I was going to call it an “imaginary” (as a portmanteau of “imagined” and “dictionary”) but turns out that the word “imaginary” was already concoctularied, which is actually fine because “concoctulary” sounds sort of unintentionally dirty and is also great fun to say. Try it for yourself. Con-COC-chew-lary. It sings.”
So I needed a word for the way the clouds reflected in the blue still water of Batter Creek off of Sands Beach in Port Royal and I found flimmering.
Try it for yourself.
It sings.
No surprise to say that I didn’t invent it though.
Carl Sandburg did.
In his poem, Dream Girl, in the section Other Days of the book, Chicago Poems as reprinted in the Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, Mr. Sandburg wrote:
You will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.
You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.
Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.
Flimmering.
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.
It sings.
So does the view.
No Haiku For You 