Some Accumulated Treasures of a Life

 

Some Accumulated Treasures of a Life

 

the children we were

              are omnipresent

 

I’m sorry to tell you but you can’t hear

the ocean in a clamshell, at least

not the clamshells I’ve known, dull,

flat, enough to only give tiny details of

news about what world's stuck inside:

a sealed sea alive in a belly, a neck,

and rough bearded fibers we’d take

off after we steamed them in

their own very homes.  On the outside,

the whole thing looks like the lock

you want to break, and the inside,

the use you need of it:

 

chef?     sumptuous in wine and linguine

              all steam, initially

 

digger? money, potentially, beneath  

each hole, theirs, yours, peck after peck        

me?       spooning open those airholes

              my only bounty saltwater

 

They were always so small by the time

I got to them, the shells I grew up with:

some flat and dull, some mother-

of pearl, some opalescent: mussels, clams,

scallops.  Halfs of themselves.  Ravished.

Nothing like the conchs, the whelks,

the angel wings from the Gulf.  A nautilus?  Never. 

Unless you count 

the unreachable shelf, bounty brought

back after ages away.  I always dug alone.

 

Still, there were others, of course.  Small

periwinkles stuck under the living bladdewrack

sucking on the rocks, the water, the microscopic

Once, a whole sea snail shell, empty, I held

up to my ear and had to push it almost

inside entirely.  Shh.

I waited for the news of her world.  Instead,

the gulls rioted in mock murmuration, ravenous

for the lobster boat going by, the guy

on the stern tossing off old bait. 

In the wheelhouse, my father throttled and laid

off the throttle, and, spying me

onshore, a spec-like grit under the lip

of flesh, spit and rubbed his teeth

with his tongue.  I saw a ring

of gold around his boat but the birds

soon took to moving on to their own

wandering.  I was so close I could’ve

swum up to him and then aboard,

wet and entirely penetrated

with the cold ocean.  I wanted to,

 

some of me, wanted to unpocket

all the shells, empty as they were, back

to bottom, back to being moved

this way, that way by the tide.  Flood or ebb.

It didn’t matter.  What mattered was

they’d all be crushed, being held

or smashed against the shore like that,

or the boat bottom, or the trap

of the dragging gear…whatever’s underneath,

whatever we can’t see or breathe in,

whatever we can’t imagine another creature

even needing, clams, scallops, whore’s

eggs, or maybe that naked crab

I saw just before the boat came in,

too big for all that was previous of it,

too small for what it currently was:

hear it? opportunity knocking, ears

hands reaching into the steam,

recklessly selecting.