Sock Puppet Secrets

The world may be your oyster, but it's my clam - DJ Wasabi Sunrise

This week is dedicated to two of Stanley Moss' poems, "Frog" and "Clams"

Frog

I hold this living coldness,

this gland with eyes, mouth, feet,

shattered mirror of all creatures,

pulsing smile of fish, serpent, and man,

feet and hands come out of a head

that is also a tail,

just as I caught him most of my life ago

in the sawdust of the icehouse.

I could not believe in him if he were not here.

He rests my spirit

and is beautiful as waterlilies.

The sound of his call is too large for his body:

"irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant."

Once in the dry countries he was a god.

Clams

Ancient of Days, bless the innocent

who can do nothing but cling,

open or close their stone mouths.

Out of water they live on themselves

and what little sea water they carry on with them.

Bless all things unaware that percieve

life and death as comfort or discomfort:

bless their great dumbness.

We die misinformed

with our mouths of shell open.

At the last moment, as our lives fall off,

a gull lifts us, drops us on the rocks, bare

because the tide is out. Flesh sifts the sludge.

At sea bottom, on the rocks below the wharf,

a salt foot, too humble to have a voice,

thumps for representation, joy.