My father says to pick a beer.
Outside, two men in yellow coats
hose mud from a reef of oysters
to be priced and sold by the bucketful.
The owner’s a fellow named Tadpole.
Lives up Mosquito Creek
and raises labradors, without which
the basin’s fallen mallards
would vanish to the marsh
and the mouths of its gators,
which wear feathers in their teeth.
Write that down, says my father,
who knows a beautiful thing
when it slithers over his path.
I’ve seen him point a pistol
at a coiled cottonmouth.
We ride home with a bag of shrimp
and two Bud Heavies
in the valley between us.
Do I know the word spleenful, he asks.
Like a dog in the water, he gathers
a soft-plumed bounty to lay at my feet.
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