Clamming

I remember rising in the early hours to go with my father or a friend. At dawn we’d walk the shallows to fnd their little breathing holes in the mud. The smell of the bays and mud returns to me at times, and a sense of the fowing current.

Egrets and gulls had their space, part of the design to which we belong.

Among the reeds I’d sometimes fnd a shark tooth. Back on shore I used to see the shell middens left under the bright sun by those long gone and wondered about them.

Because I lived here not just anywhere I used to fnd a lot of clams and oysters, and slept under the stars until the sun spilled forth. Walked with the afternoon rain through temples of forest, and trembled when thunder exploded out of itself into bright noise.

I remember the clam bakes on the beach at night with friends from college. Everyone was humming, happy. How we cling to the roads we know and reach the crossroads, searching for what was wonderful, exciting, familiar.

Stephen