Pododesmus macrochisma: METAPHOR FOR GIRLS 

 

Each morning I walk the sand, searching

for what my grandmother misnamed

the “ugly clams” caught in foam left behind

by a retreating wave or stranded high on shore

from last night’s tide. Smaller than my thumb

or filling my palm, they might come to rest

among seaweeds torn from their beds,

half buried by wind-driven grains. Often

when I find a shell, there is another nearby.

Is it too fanciful to think they gather to die?

Perhaps because the first makes me alert

to the next. Every one I have seen lies

face down, resembling nothing much of note.

Some thinner than drawing paper, sometimes

thick, calloused like my toes. They lived wild

in depths to three hundred feet, here adrift

and dead, their softer life dissolved in the sea.

Only rarely are the unequal halves complete,

shaped back shell still attached to the round.

Sometimes only shards remain, wholeness

crushed by the careless heel of an earlier walker

passing by, oblivious to the gift underfoot.

One reason to search at dawn. Turn one

over, see what hides—that nacre, sometimes

scarred, dark glimmering, pearly sheen—alive

amber and green, holding captive light.

originally published last year in Portland Review