ISSUE 6

Paul Nelson

 

The Difficulty

 

Slicing to the dock, two angling lobster boats,

familiar as neighborhood dogs, shrug into reverse,

go to neutral and bump the pilings and hung rubber tires,

the slick bay behind them double vee’d, gulls riding

confused combers, calmly, the harbor quivering

in midday sea-light that fades for a passing cloud,

then shivers everything again, engines shutting down,

coughing, two men ripping kelp from their piled lines,

shoving crates, sluicing buckets across the deck

and out the scuppers, mopping up, muddy bait-juice

clouding the crystal green swirling by the still propellers,

the view to the bay eastward blocked by stacked,

weed-furred wire traps on the docks that nevertheless

let the light through, like stanzas that have wallowed

all summer on the bottom, waiting for winter to breathe.

 

Each man stops, stands struck by the silver halide

quiet of the moment, as if their hearts paused, each in

its basket of ribs, then counts the lobsters, crabs

they’ve caught, articulated beings, armored by carapaces,

claws, pincers… warriors that will not survive, piles of them

scrabbling to keep from each other in submerged crates

waiting for the iced Co-op truck.

 

Calendar art, this setting, no fresh wind till after noon

SSW, hauling fog, sometimes storm around to the NE,

surely, as one of the men shifts, shakes his head, spits,

his red hands dangling, helplessly opens his mouth,

gapes, then yells something fierce, zips his mouth,

eyes dazed, as if experiencing a clot. The other one hears

what he thinks he hears, stiffens, face in vague desiccation.

They are ashore again, the sea away behind them, beyond

three granite, spruce tonsured islands.

 

 

 

Out on the Fundy Clam Flat

 

the bore tide draws low forever, then turns to face us

and slide forward for another quarter day

filling the bay beneath a morning moon’s pearl dispassion

 

A speck getting larger slogs toward us from the ocean,

suck and susurrus around his boots, a man we know,

this digger, this bettor on tides, dragging his loaded

 

clam-roller on a child’s toboggan, and some of us think

he must be wry, droll when he’s found next ebb,

wallowing, stiff and sallow, wide-eyed, expect him

 

to sit up and say “I tricked you into being.” What was

he about? Absent-minded? Sure of himself and us,

and the sober tide, to drown so, while one cow and three pigs

 

ate red, salty dulse, but plugged ahead of him quickly

passing us on the littoral, animals on solid ground, abiding

no eternity of tide, sun or implacable moon.

​​​

​

​

​