Tabasco Beach
I took a walk once along a beach
in a lost world on a distant island
barely inhabited where ravens hailed
each other in their sharp haunting tones
and a ghostly fox could be seen sometimes
slipping through a field for mice or a fat
Ptarmigan hen leading her chicks.
I carried a bottle of Tabasco sauce
and a book of matches was tucked in
my pocket as I walked down the harsh
stony beach still swathed
in places by mist as blue sea with its odor
began to shine in the morning sun
and volcanoes bore snow through clouds.
The tide was out on the primordial
beach and giant clams could be seen
where they grew undisturbed to advanced
age, poking half their shells out of mud
for the benefit of the marauding
prehistoric man who would happen
by hunting the fat of the land.
And so I stamped footprints in the sand
where only few footfalls had scarred
the beach for thousands of years,
toward the leviathan clams of prehistory
as a fitful prehistoric man would tread
bent on a bountiful feast where
it could always be had.
I pulled the monster clams out of the mud
as a serene prehistoric man
untroubled by considerations of matters
brewing histories beyond the horizon,
I saw the sea only as a huge wild mother
giving me all the clams I needed,
without grief in Alaska.
I dropped my load of clams in the sand
and gathered drift wood for my fire
to boil the clams in their succulent juices.
The dry wood was piled and I
reached for the book of matches
setting down the Tabasco sauce with the
serenity typical of prehistoric man.
The match flared gamely against
the twigs and the feeble flame
grew slowly in the hollows of the wood
sending smoke through the pile
with that smell that thrilled prehistoric
man through eons as he watched
the cold sea crashing against cliffs.
I watched the mild surf roll in
as the clams sat among flames
and opened up to go to boiling
neatly in their cavernous shells
as a huge raven from the
Stone Age flaunted a black wing
mightily and squawked contentment.
I noticed a strange creature
walking awkwardly down the beach
as if lame with age and I shortly
recognized it as a bald eagle
too old and fat to fly -- a beach
comber approaching amicably
keeping his distance walking by.
I wrapped my shirt around my hand
to handle the hot clam shells,
removing them from the fire,
setting them out as if in a trendy
restaurant neatly for the liberal
Tabasco sauce dousing of prodigious meat.
I ate in serenity as prehistoric man.
pjk
Poetry by Peter J. Kautsky
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Written on 2009-06-18 at 04:08
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