Mussel Hunter At Rock Harbor

I came before the water —-

Colorists came to get the

Good of the Cape light that scours

Sand grit to sided crystal

And buffs and sleeks the blunt hulls

Of the three fishing smacks beached

On the bank of the river's

Backtracking tail. I'd come for

Free fish-bait: the blue mussels

Clumped like bulbs at the grassroot

Margin of the tidal pools.

Dawn tide stood dead low. I smelt

Mud stench, shell guts, gulls' leavings;

Heard a queer crusty scrabble

Cease, and I neared the silenced

Edge of a cratered pool-bed.

The mussels hung dull blue and

Conspicuous, yet it seemed

A sly world's hinges had swung

Shut against me. All held still.

Though I counted scant seconds,

Enough ages lapsed to win

Confidence of safe-conduct

In the wary other world

Eyeing me. Grass put forth claws,

Small mud knobs, nudged from under,

Displaced their domes as tiny

Knights might doff their casques. The crabs

Inched from their pygmy burrows

And from the trench-dug mud, all Camouflaged in mottled mail

Of browns and greens. Each wore one

Claw swollen to a shield large

As itself—no fiddler's arm

Grown Gargantuan by trade,

But grown grimly, and grimly

Borne, for a use beyond my

Guessing of it. Sibilant

Mass-motived hordes, they sidled

Out in a converging stream

Toward the pool-mouth, perhaps to

Meet the thin and sluggish thread

Of sea retracing its tide-

Way up the river-basin.

Or to avoid me. They moved

Obliquely with a dry-wet

Sound, with a glittery wisp

And trickle. Could they feel mud

Pleasurable under claws

As I could between bare toes?

That question ended it—I

Stood shut out, for once, for all,

Puzzling the passage of their

Absolutely alien

Order as I might puzzle

At the clear tail of Halley's

Comet coolly giving my

Orbit the go-by, made known

By a family name it

Knew nothing of. So the crabs

Went about their business, which

Wasn't fiddling, and I filled

A big handkerchief with blue

Mussels. From what the crabs saw,

If they could see, I was one

Two-legged mussel-picker.

High on the airy thatching

Of the dense grasses I found

The husk of a fiddler-crab,

Intact, strangely strayed above

His world of mud—green color

And innards bleached out blown off

Somewhere by much sun and wind;

There was no telling if he'd

Died recluse of suicide

Or headstrong Columbus crab.

The crab-face, etched and set there,

Grimaced as skulls grimace: it

Had an Oriental look,

A samurai death mask done

On a tiger tooth, less for

Art's sake than God's. Far from sea —-

Where red-freckled crab-backs, claws

And whole crabs, dead, their soggy

Bellies pallid and upturned,

Perform their shambling waltzes

On the waves' dissolving turn

And return, losing themselves

Bit by bit to their friendly

Element—this relic saved

Face, to face the bald-faced sun.