What comfort to see them trudge on the tideland

back and forth with nets and buckets,

dredging for puddles of ripened, lung-shaped oysters.

Bundles of thick coats and boots, they plant lanterns

and hunker in small glows to pick

secret after knobby, clicking secret.

Lowest tides draw them late night down

the bank of surf grass, crunching across sand dollars

and crab shells, clattering from the rocks

and slurching to their muddy bed while I slip

into mine. With slowing eyes, I watch them roam

and dazzle like prehistoric fireflies,

call out over the blue-green mussel worm

that twists a slimed gleam in the muck,

the severed arm of the six-rayed star,

some kind of eye globbed on a stick. The one

with the roughest hands keeps to himself

until a dying fire coaxes him open for the children.

I wake before dawn and they are there,

gathered breath steaming as they spangle

the wet emptiness and clump in mud-heavied boots.

At every bright lump shucked

out of the dark by a joggled lantern,

I want to surge down and labor shoulder

to shoulder, grab the ridged, slippery shells

in my pale hands, break each gritty fruit

from its cluster and become something other

than their midden ghosting the shore,

the relinquishing moon of jellyfish—to do

a work of weight, of being

one of the shades among the lights

before the cold sea climbs my legs.