Clamming

Bumped feet up and down the sound in shallows
dislodging clamped nuts from their embedments. Could do it
all day and did, this tradition. Later slurped like giant
boogers off their shells, scraped teeth and squirts
of sauces. Our cash-strapped dads, skimpy
seventies boys off for a quick buck and errand
like a calling. Clear-skinned in the sun, half-naked, shored up—
tide low with the channel shifting course. Rowed out
and burrowed down the wet banks, caught breaks at sandbars
reaching under where water cuts the waist. Their past prime
beyond mine, slack and idle. I was afraid
I’d ruin my life—children, wives. Lord knows
what I’ve swallowed to get here.

Wanting Children

Lying in the morning with the cat on my chest
or having him ears folded eyes wide slung over
my shoulder walking, I’m captive. Lash-backed,
serif-tailed, and you circle my circle
around him, our eyes locked on variable,
on the beacon extended

from those places we end. The blanket over stains
a blue afternoon: beach weather, tide drawing in
sheets. Webbed and beaked detritus of the gulls.
Offer a bucket of chum.

There was a volume
written in sand, canary yellow in the tint: popped
dried jellies, tin drum boat, seaweed scabbed
and beaded— barnacles— chains to the earth.

A head peeled foam and white
through the bud of a wave. That
could have been it. One third thing.
The end we grant ourselves.