The oystermen of Apalachee Bay stand
in their small boats. They spread their tongs
down from the boats, biting down bubbles.
The oystermen do blind men’s work, rocked
in the visible cup of land. From the shallow
deep they dredge the green-black rocks,
scatter them over the trays, throw out
the halves and sand-filled wastes.
The oystermen cheerfully curse and rake
again under their shaken reflections.
In the keeper bins, the knotted clusters
clamp their wet mouths shut.
Up the docks, five women stand all day
at their five stalls under the windows,
shouting over the whistling saws that grind
open the oysters of Apalachee Bay.
The women’s surgical fingers flick brine
and gather muscle. Through the glass,
the women watch their men in the boats
come nosing in, shuffling the water’s sky.
Below the legs of the women, five chutes
open to the bay, heaping shells back,
greenish, bleached, translucent, out
of their sight. The men rumbling up
from the docks with their wheelbarrows
eye the size of the heaps for a sure thing
against the vague roll of the sea.
At the windows, the women’s eyes are sharp
for quality, measuring gift and giver, the slits
of their eyes more telling than their mouths.