The unassuming
Piddock clam
Hidden from view
Eight years or more burrowing
12 degrees forward
Shell rasping against rock
Then 12 again
30 times until the circling drill
Of its own self
Turns complete —
Again and again.
On the cobbled beach
Tide-filled, summer camp children-filled
Moving like sanderlings escaping the waves
Florescent lime t-shirts
So they are all easily in view
I scramble
Over glinty metamorphics
Some larger than
Suitcases
Fallen from the leaning, torn-open
Conglomerate cliffs
To find each
holy rock
Each curiously carved and hollowed
Remnant of these clams’
Industry.
Grey sandstone their substrate
Cylindrical passages carved as if
by auger and bit
Many parallel, not overlapping
Partially or all the way through.
Surf-rounded
Some small as pendants
To wear round the neck, ready
For its cord or chain
For years I have passed them by
Never guessing
Them artifacts of undersea molluskan
Conurbations.
What cities
unknown and unremarked
Lie all about us
We urban sophisticates with our
surf toys and magic wheeled vehicles
Think only of ourselves
While much older are the city builders
Under wave
Atlantians that need no Plato
To tell their tale
A million years and more
Chiseling out the boulevards and avenues.
And what of the ants
The birds
The corals and mangroves
All diligent in their complexity
With no recourse to our war, famine or fame
And I say
We city people
Are so much younger
And still have so much to learn.
5 August 2019
Beneath the Dana Point Headlands
Approaching high tide
* The Pacific Rough Piddock Clam, Zirfaea pilsbryi, ranging from Siberia to Mexico, during its eight year life “never completely ceases digging its burrow.” https://inverts.wallawalla.edu/Mollusca/Bivalvia/Myoida/Pholadidae/Zirfaea_pilsbryi.html
Mountaineity 