Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems

Shrimping

-44SHRIMPING It is not so much the shrimp that have brought me out here, those flicking brown knuckles, as the seething bag of life we dump onto the picking board. My father-in-law yanks the knot: the pile—crabs, shrimp, sundry fish— settles out across the board, riding on its own silver slime until as far as I can reach the sea has spread its mystery. We ease the net out again, dropping lines and chains to drag while we separate shrimp from what will not be kept. With spatula and fork we rake out claw-waving crabs, flopping rays, whatever could pinch or sting; shrimp go into an ice chest. My father-in-law identifies the things I do not know, shapes and colors odd in the sun, creatures of another world our sweeping net has gathered. His hand avoids spines and teeth, pulls one prize after another out, holds them up for me to see. (continues) -45As the sun begins to settle down, we pull the net a final time, rinse it in the wake, and turn for home, toward beginning lights. We are slimed and stained, hair aglitter with scales, our hands pricked and burning from spines and smeared with hot jellies of the sea. We do not talk on our way back, our minds on what we have and what we have left. I tilt my beer to the falling sun and the dark water below. ...