E-Gam

“To those men of the Muskeget Station, next to god, we feel indebted for our lives. We had to stay (on account of the ice) at the station till Tuesday Feb. 24th. It must be here remarked that the captains of those schooners had no opportunity to communicate with their respective owners, as there is neither telephone nor telegraph cable connected with the island of Muskeget. The life saving station is, we should say furnished with everything except means to maintain communication with the outside world; and it is to be hoped that this will soon be supplied.”

Excerpted from “Lifesaving Nantucket” by Edouard Stackpole

Not all of Richard Cambridge’s Nantucket poems are about beach engineering or erosion. Here’s one of my favorites:

Beachglass

I am a collector of beachglass

and have been one for many a season.

I can tell from a shard no larger

than my thumbnail— from the arc of its curve,

from its shape, weight, and thickness, even

from the angle of its breaking— its origin

on a bottle:  base, body, neck, or rim.

And with each piece I find, I like to stop

and rest for a while, turning it over

carefully between thumb and forefinger,

noting its color, amber, green, or clear,

it’s source, soda, beer, whisky, wine bottle,

and its size, nip, pint, fifth, quart, or magnum.

But the luster— it’s all in the luster!

It’s got to be frosted like gumdrops—

no shine or clarity— opaque.

And if it’s not perfect—

if there’s a shine or a glitter,

or if a rough edge catches my finger—

then I toss it back to the sea

as I would an undersized lobster

to be buffeted by waves and sand

and harvested in another season.

These bits of colored glass I find

are dear to me like rubies, diamonds,

emeralds, and semi-precious stones, and

I like to think what I would do with them.

I would make a necklace for a gypsy bride,

smith them into silver bracelets, and send them

to every woman I have ever loved,

or make a mosaic of unknown design

in thanks for every poem I’ve ever written

and offer it to the wind, the sea, and the sun.

This aimless path I walk between bits

of broken glass is the only thing I know—

the only thing I hold on to.  I will

be back for another season’s harvest.

Here is a short work by longtime summer visitor Richard Cambridge from a collection of his  poems about the island.

‘Sconset Walk

I took a long walk along the shore at ’Sconset until I reached a house close to the edge of the cliff.  There was all sorts of human activity— post-diggers, and rigging strung to hold back the cliff, and pumping stations to drain the rivulets running out of and eroding the cliff, and machines named after animals— bobcats and caterpillars— and it was all so laughable, like little children playing with their toys, and really, it was only time for the sea to claim the sandcastle.

Several weeks ago Nat Philbrick spoke to a gathering in the Coffin School to mark the new edition of his first history book, Away Offshore . It was that history of Nantucket, commissioned by the late Bud Egan, that put Nat on course to an illustrious writing career with such titles as In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and The Last Stand.

This year the Mill Hill Press, an affiliate of the Egan Maritime Institute, sold the  publishing rights to Away Offshore to Viking Penguin, the publisher of Nat’s more recent books, thus giving it the benefit of a national promotion and distribution system.

In his talk, Nat recalled how important the book was to him, and how he spend long hours in the NHA and Atheneum libraries as well as every other source he could find, piecing together this first thoroughgoing history of the island, and conceiving of its organization, around interesting figures in Nantucket’s long past.

So the Mill Hill Press, under Egan’s auspices, launched Away Offshore onto the national scene. We hope that over time, some of our other books will fare as well.