Clammer

Soft-gray skies blend into green-gray
tide ebbing from dark-gray mud.
A charcoal-gray clammer, with mud boots
and a plastic bucket, probes the dark-gray

for razors like a surgeon locating a tumor,
or the bullet that pays the bills. Nurses squawk
a cadence of progress, clinking tools, like gulls
hunting litter. The clammer carries

a heavy bucket to the Tidewater
and leaves razors in a tank
behind the front door where a suit
stalks a sit-down dinner with white wine,

and the clammer gets a beer at Becky's.