The Glad Choice

Gladly I’d choose an oyster’s life

They pile up, the symphonies,

In scraps of starts and spiny bones,

They clog the musted guiltworn air

That drapes a late but scanty sleep.


We have to wind through hopes, a heap,

We have to fall upon a crease,

We have a circus track as well,

But it is broken and veers off

To heights or through the drains…


And do not overstate my gains,

Though I myself like so to do.

I’d take a solid increment. In

Truth, I’d take the oyster’s life.


This gift or stolen flame of thought – I could take it,

Given the choice, I’d leave it. Now I’ve got it

Its use is but a commentary on all I fear or cannot do.


Oh surely, if the third road grew

(The spirit’s twin of ninety-seven’s vow, say,

The elite’s liberty, the water-fairy’s rope)

Certainly all thinking beasts would bless their souls

Before abolishing them to reach for you,

That steeper oracle, that freer point…


The road is very sheer, sharp at its joint,

And the mild clime pools by the seas:

Give me the oyster’s solar suite.


The round of short dependent craving meat,

Immobile satisfaction – recall now

Those gaseous things both inert, and noble.

Some distant cultivated bursary

Installing one in the world’s oldest hall,

The shell…


Order, not obsessive ordering…well

I will take up that aeon-length fellowship

At All Shells’ College, The Sea!

The ocean shall gawp wide like one green eye

And I, my pearl – its mote, its speck, its sleep;

The bed shall pout below, poignant-glad lip

And I will cling and never think again.