Men pull from Bog Brook,
limp remains left behind
by stronger truants. Not
a row boat or a fishing pole,
a boy dragged down
between the reservoir's
eastern shore and a small
island at its southern end.
Morning's keys ripple,
playing light while crows caw,
gossip spreading through town
from the copse. As the flaccid teen
lies, an electric signal travels
unseen to the mothers of Southeast.
Mouths of grown men quiver.
An honor guard surrounds.
Kneeling, a hefty fireman, blows
daylight into his chest. Now father
and coach, the hulking shadow
implores a youngster, he does not know
to return, rise from the Styx, into a day
brighter than he had ever known.

ODDITIES

After the hurricane, sisters
collect one of everything
with skeletons on the outside.
Handfuls of translucent jingles,
serrated pearls

lavish in low water.
Clattering chimes mingle
in a child's yellow bucket.
Half of an angel's wings wash up.
Hinged pairs hide in mudflats.

Brown, rose, and taupe glint
in calico clam shallows.
Rust spots and white innards signal.
Other novelties emerge
in the squall: zigzag scallops,

egg cockles and babies' ears.
Difficult to find except
in shrimp boat nets,
a lion's paw stretches on sand.
A shark eye stares
with a stern father's glare near

low-tide line, feeding on mussels.
A razor clam cuts a thumb.
Sand dollars, with no arms
or legs, sleep in cribs

on tiny spines. Found alive,
sea urchins crawl warily
by the purple hairs
of their bodies, bristling,
in camouflage. With astral
point belly buttons,

they are starfish turned
inside out. Broken bottles
tumbled by waves and wind
litter dunes with green tears.
Children gather gumdrops

in fists. After a tempest,
you find cobalt blues: once
shards of Bromo Seltzer or
Milk of Magnesia bottles or
Vick's or Noxzema jars sun

washed and saltwater rinsed.
Pick up brake light rubies,
cracked Oldsmobile gems,
or a church's stained pane
shattered and tossed by a tornado.

Girls fill pails with oddities.

CRUSTACEANS

Sea mocks with tide-rip.
Leaning back, eyes narrow
into crabs. Groaned remarks
scratch ears of Abalone.
We sit, aslant, the Pacific's
reflection in wineglasses. I hear
lobsters' clicking on the bottom.
I cannot contain uncertainties---
whether our words are bone, tooth
or crustacean. Sometimes, plungers,
we fill porcelain with an ocean's flush.
Twisting into other things,
we crack oxygen, fillet molecules,
split atoms ignoring fractured
bits. Beside these sands, broken rock,
volcanic glass, and empty shells,
lips swell as a foraging colony
of gulls drop shellfish
breaking open
dive-bombing the black beach.