Oysters
Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into
the water.
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.
We had driven to that coast
Through flowers
and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying
down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.
Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled
their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege
And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear
light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
