I was listening to the ol’ oystermen
telling their tales of dragging the bottom,

spilling their souls like “pieces of silver”
tossed onto a sawdust floor,

their eyes, red like the tide, their skin, worn and
wrinkled like the onyx oyster shells.

We drank from amber bottles at the bar,
I bought some, they bought some,

mostly with money they didn’t have,
running tabs, running into the red.

A red tide wrecked their season,
bank accounts bleeding red as boat payments

ran aground. It was a
season, too short for too many.

Most, still seeing red, told tales with violence in
their voices, of being boarded and fined,

several times –
one, boarded over and over

all in one day; the men in green kept sayin’,
“caught ya red-handed,”

but they were really goin’ for the green,
seems –
the State needed money, too.

Someone fed the Wurlitzer but it wouldn’t work,
the only sound, a sad onyx silence.

So we drank more beers, and the oystermen
sang bluesy songs of old sailors

trying to survive; bluesy songs of sailors
with hope in their hearts;

they were a tiny theater,
and I was an audience of one,

peering through an amber curtain.

February 2012