Clamdigging in Clark's Island Bay

We set our jaws to the idea of prairie,
the idea of sea, the receding edge of both.

You had brought the rakes, the wooden
creels made of slats with worker's handles.

Re-inventing the feel of often,
even in a terrible sort of way, the tide

remembered. Inexhaustible as self-pity,
it returned, watered rocks and laid

down to a cloudless morning after
too many cocktails of chemicals and sand.

Blessed are they who make and make do.

Like the nest I found on canal's edge, across
from last September, its brown pasture:

fallen, abandoned, an oriole's gourd-like work.
No ordinary weaving of grass and stem-

what was within reach made do:
horsehair so tightly knit, I had to hide

it for some other visit, some other viewing
when cottonwoods would green the bottoms

or aspen, distant and slow to wake,
would give the decisive firs another sound

to stand to. Does every heart know how it beats
for all that is not itself, world out of reach?

I call to you-you with tool in hand,
scaling the rocks to get below-

lest the revolution begins, lest the
revolution succeeds-perseverance is all,

especially in the small quiet weight
of a talent.

The idea of sea, of prairie.
Clouds grow grander over both.

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