Visit to Harpswell
Editor’s Note: As noted in my interview with Carter Newell in this issue, blue mussels, once abundant in the intertidal zone, have become scarce there now, in part because of predation by green crabs but also for other reasons, including warmer waters and overharvesting. The girl’s father in this poem likely knows Carter Newell, as the people who farm shellfish are a close-knit group in Maine. – Liz Thompson
Soft-shell clams have quit the small
tide-flat beside the house only
a crushed-shell layer of evidence.
Mussels have abandoned every
inch—two hundred-sixteen miles—
of shore the township boasts.
Over crab cakes and roasted
root vegetables we discuss green crabs
first brought here in ballast water
in the eighteen hundreds and like us
tough adaptable not much good
to eat invading up the coast.
The granddaughter is six weeks old
still distressed by this assault
of senses. Her mother’s milk soothes
only for a moment. Her father
raises oysters hopes to clean the ocean
capture carbon make delicious food.
Sunday’s paper says this year scallops
perished in Long Island Sound before
they could be caught and eaten. Oyster
shells lie empty in the Gulf. We have
no way to keep up with the losses
and still we’re desperate to comfort her.
Mussels are hard to find near shore these days, but make themselves at home in deeper water, including on lobster buoys. This one was washed up on Old Orchard Beach in Maine. Photo © Liz Thompson
Scudder Parker’s first volume of poetry, Safe as Lightning, released in June 2020 by Rootstock Publishing, was awarded the Best Poetry Book of 2020 by the Independent Publishers of New England (IPNE). Scudder’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including Sun Magazine, Crosswinds, The Lascaux Review, Sky Island Journal, Vermont Life, Northern Woodlands, and Twyckenham. “The Poem of the World” was selected as a finalist in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.
For Scudder, poetry is the search for truthfulness, not homage to conclusion. It is exploration—fit of bone in socket, bees at riot in oregano blossoms, ache of old injustice summoning an opened heart, the strange joy of longing, laughter at long-defended foolishness. Family, farming, failing, finding. Foraging for the innocent sacred, patient in our midst. Scudder’s had numerous careers—preacher, organizer, gardener, politician, energy consultant, poet—and is still learning from each of them. His new volume, The Poem of the World, published by Kelsay Books, is now available in bookstores and online. You can follow Scudder’s work at Substack.