Whelks

And here is the poem mentioned at the end of my last post about our time at the Delmarva coast last month, it is from New and Selected Poems, which, if you don't yet know and love Mary Oliver, would be a great place to meet her.

Whelks

Here are the perfect fans of the scallops,
quahogs, and weedy mussels
still holding their orange fruit– and here
are the whelks– whirlwinds, each the
size of a fist, but always cracked and
broken– clearly they have been
traveling under the sky-blue waves for
a long time. All my life I have been
restless– I have felt there is something
more wonderful than gloss– than
wholeness– than staying at home. I
have not been sure what it is. But
every morning on the wide shore I pass
what is perfect and shining to look for
the whelks, whose edges have rubbed so
long against the world they have
snapped and crumbled– they have
almost vanished, with the last
relinquishing of their unrepeatable
energy, back into everything else.
When I find one, I hold it in my hand, I
look over that shaking fire, I shut my
eyes. Not often, but now and again
there's a moment when the heart cries
aloud: yes, I am willing to be that wild
darkness, that long, blue body of light.

-Mary Oliver