Select Poems

Shadow of a Shadow

80 feet down I’ve looked a few in the eye,
I make a shallow competitor.
Cutting a path, fin to sky,
10 feet of determined predator.
Fathoms deep along the sand,
less fish than finned contraband
heading straight to my outstretched hand.

Floating bales instead of bait,
Sinaloa to Sarasota from the boat to the beach.
Trading scales for scales in weight,
they learned where to breach.
It’s no science fiction,
450 million years in,
this commerce of addiction.

Slick and stealth and barely seen,
like liquid, the shadow of a shadow.
Spielberg’s Hollywood eating machine
the color of the water below.
We should have predicted this outcome
since we poisoned the water we’d come from
yet one more unsolvable conundrum.
 

Crassostrea Virginica

One good step off the shore, so
cold, and bright and deeper still,
the current pulls out to sea here.
Leaves nothing behind that isn’t anchored.
Exhales a fresh filigree of plankton,
crystalline and amorphous, siphoned over gills,
absorbed and transformed.
Changes sex from season to season,
whim of temperature and tide,
estrus or ejaculation by the mood
of the tempest Neptune.

Gods collect gifts on the wind
from every direction. Bearing sails
and the masts of ships on the horizon
and all the dead men at sea inside
this small, saline mass, unburdened
by brain or nerves, its tiny, transparent
heartbeat like an embryo suspended
in cervical fluid resting gently
in the palm of a hand.

Salt and rum and spices and
mountains of shells left behind,
rewards of the serious work
of survival at this latitude.
Teased lightly, the tightest muscle
relaxes, shells part with the scent
of a newborn infant’s breath.
Symbolism of woman that
consumed the thoughts
of sailors so long from home.

There’s a chord that runs
through generations
that teach their children to eat
some animals raw, some cooked
and others whole, but
this one best eaten alive.
Resigned to the gut
beating heart intact
a wealth of history on the palette:
the taste of past wars
and oil spills and sunrises
over beaches covered in snow.

Ships couldn’t anchor on reefs
so thick with shells open to the
incoming tide they would
compromise their hulls.
But, Wellfleets don’t exist anymore.
A Chesapeake from Cape Cod
has a distinctly different accent than
a Chesapeake from Long Island.
But, Wellfleets don’t exist anymore.
Books and maps and charts
and lessons and poems
consign knowledge to the intellect.

But, this tiny, ancient, armored
ecosystem: the brine on the tongue,
the fatal bite, pressing to the palette,
sweet melon and champagne hues,
the taste of the very waters of life —
this is how we teach our children
to remember how the world used to be.