1. Education
InterBoard Poetry Competition
 gif
Honorable Mention, November 2008
clr gif
AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
      Melissa Resch
      (About Poetry Forum)

Across the flats in Provincetown, Cape Cod
walking at sunrise in autumn
breathing in coolness of morning      low tide
like a bathtub draining empty
bubbles and crabs slinking
airborne gulls crying      loud and terse

This promising hour before coffee
prospectors laden with rakes and buckets
proceed over rocks and beach
ready to stake claim      a bit of sandbar as their own

Clammers are an endangered species
exteriors of calcified armor
too soft in the middle      just like
the clams they cherish and gather

Gashing at sand with tines of hard metal
eager for each clank of promise
fooled by broken shells      robbed of their innards
by one who came before

Buckets are filled inch by inch
heavy and ripe, lifted and lugged      the retreat begins
Briny ripples trickle in, cover and flood
this stretch of toiled, torn sand
chasing the diggers back to town      this wedge of land we call home
to study and share and shuck
bivalve bounty from an ocean garden



 gif
clr gif

About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners

clr gif
 gif
clr gif

Discuss in our forum

©2012 About.com. All rights reserved.

A part of The New York Times Company.