| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
| Honorable Mention, November 2008 | |
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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 
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