What comfort to see them trudge on the tideland
back and forth with nets and buckets,
dredging for puddles of ripened, lung-shaped oysters.
Bundles of thick coats and boots, they plant lanterns
and hunker in small glows to pick
secret after knobby, clicking secret.
Lowest tides draw them late night down
the bank of surf grass, crunching across sand dollars
and crab shells, clattering from the rocks
and slurching to their muddy bed while I slip
into mine. With slowing eyes, I watch them roam
and dazzle like prehistoric fireflies,
call out over the blue-green mussel worm
that twists a slimed gleam in the muck,
the severed arm of the six-rayed star,
some kind of eye globbed on a stick. The one
with the roughest hands keeps to himself
until a dying fire coaxes him open for the children.
I wake before dawn and they are there,
gathered breath steaming as they spangle
the wet emptiness and clump in mud-heavied boots.
At every bright lump shucked
out of the dark by a joggled lantern,
I want to surge down and labor shoulder
to shoulder, grab the ridged, slippery shells
in my pale hands, break each gritty fruit
from its cluster and become something other
than their midden ghosting the shore,
the relinquishing moon of jellyfish—to do
a work of weight, of being
one of the shades among the lights
before the cold sea climbs my legs.