MUSSELS

Where the rocks have emerged from the falling tide
- skeletal remains of the land -
mussel pickers bend over their prey
which had thought to be secure
behind their locked bluey-black front doors.
However, they are doomed to be boiled alive
inside their armour-plated homes,
and devoured by the score,
accompanied by frites and beer
or a carafe of white wine.
In restaurants and cafes of
which this town has many,
a massacre of mussels occurs almost every day,
and their emptied shells thrown away
- evidence of defenses circumvented.
I've sometimes felt uneasy about so many little lives
being stolen on such a massive scale.
But then, on the beach, I've seen
openned shells swept by the sea into long
steep-sided banks, a meter high or so,
and in each gaping shell had been a life
that had expired quite naturally.
And all those lives, begun and ended,
mean as little to the universe
as all our lives, begun and ended;
bi-valve and human - just passing moments
slipping through eternity.