Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ADVICE TO A CLAM-DIGGER; AN AMERICAN GEORGIC, by WILBERT SNOW


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ADVICE TO A CLAM-DIGGER; AN AMERICAN GEORGIC, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Go when the friendly moon permits the tides
Last Line: That crown the flowing surface of the tide.
Alternate Author Name(s): Snow, Charles Wilber
Subject(s): Clams


Go when the friendly moon permits the tides
To drop out at early morn or eve;
When eel-grass lies in windrows on the flats,
And rockweed lays its khaki counterpanes
Or empty conkles farther up the beach;
Seek out a place where mud-enameled sand
Looks like a colander whose holes emit
Little salt water geysers when you step;
Then, facing shoreward, dig till you become
A lame and muddy partner of the cove.

Marvels undreamed of suddenly unfold
The secrets they have kept concealed so long:
The rancid mud-clams whose white shells betray
A worthlessness within, like beggar's gold
Or empty conkles farther up the beach;
The iridescent clam-worms blue and green
With esculating red and yellow fringes,
Like Chinese dragons whose soft tentacles
Expand, contract, and writhe in oozy slime;
Long buried whore's-eggs; razor-fish with shells
Brown as old ivory and smooth as glass;
Or soggy timbers from a derelict
Who left her oaken bones upon a ledge
In some northeaster forty years ago.

You soon discover that the best returns
Lie nestled near the rocks that dot the cove:
Dig slowly there, lest you should break their shells,
For at a single forkful three or four
Will lay white buttocks bare before your eyes.
Protruding heads that keep a passage clear,
Aware of you, will scramble for their homes,
Spraying your eyes and face with stinging brine,
Engendering illusion that the shells
Are burrowing a fathom deep in mud.
Their flight is aided by the tousling in
Of saucy waters playing hide-and-seek
In every drain and crevice of the flats,
Laughing at your attempts to keep them out,
And salvaging rich treasure for the sea.

Your roller full, haul up your rubber boots
And wade into the green and golden cove
Where little flounders flit beneath your feet.
Pull bits of rockwood, Mother Ocean's facecloths,
And wash the thick-accumulated mud
From off your hoe handle; then souse your hod
And watch the white and blue intensify:
The sparkling freshness on the dripping shells
Which disappears as suddenly as dew
From violets or daisies in the sun,
Will teach you why the Indian long ago
Used these fair shells for ornaments and wampum,
And piled them in the self-same spot for years,
Until his heaped-up mounds were monuments
Where all spring wanderers might come and camp.

Fail not before you leave to glance around
And view the low-tide pageant of the shore:
The apprehensive manner of a gull
Who sits with white breast bulging to the breeze,
And flashes right and left his sulphur bill;
The slower movements of the pearl-gray crane
Who stands in eel-grass on a single leg,
Surveys the fishing prospect, then moves on,
To light again, survey, and move once more,
Till he has sounded out the channel's length;
The yellow bubbles on the flood tide making
A creamy dressing for the green sea-lettuce;
The dignity of rusty-iron rocks
Studded with bands of sharp white barnacles;
The breakers, if the wind blows hard off shore,
That chase each other on the sunken reefs,
And spout like white whales on an Arctic sea;
Or, if the earth be hushed to twilight calm,
The violet, lark-wine, and purple tints
That crown the flowing surface of the tide.





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