Inspiration

Inspiration

Alive and violated,

They lay on their beds of ice:

Bivalves: the split bulb

and philandering sigh of ocean.

Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

                                                         Seamus Heaney

                                                          "Oysters"

The knife I use to take the skin away

from the old and puckered potatoes was the same

knife he used to shuck clams.  Shock was the word

he said and I didn’t correct him because isn’t it

a shock to them the shoving under the coming

tide in a whole roller full of their tight-lipped

whispering spit, and even oh even more to wait

under the drapes of Spanish moss all day in the back

of his truck while the men grab their night

of twelve packs, grab the ass of their wives and laugh

at their stray dog boy, poor schmuck with his latched prick

but marvel too who all day on the flats felt the heavy

suck of mud on his boots and he can hardly pull

himself free but he’s dug more than all the rest and he’ll go

straight to her with his grip on a helluva good time.

He’s pure inspiration.  They’ll go home and take

all this sand, all these clams and dump them in the sink

these men who want a mess for supper.  Shock a whole

peck.  Freeze what we’re not gonna eat.  I tell you my Sweet,

listen to the way I slip in between the clamped lips

and with one quick flick cross the shell  and loose all that wet

throb and the black sandy cap and the easy way

that same potato knife glides under her all of her, belly

and neck and lift! and sniff! oh but isn’t that

what we all work for?  Isn’t it?