The Mollusk Pemba Steamed (Clam)

Lyrics

[Intro]
Dawn comes slow at this latitude.
The tide is out, all the way to the sea wall.
The only beach on Point Nemo is gray and cool, damp under my boots.
My wooden bucket, a gift from the Lapidary, knocks against my knee.

[Verse 1]
The iron rake feels cold in my hands. It's from the old smelter.
It scrapes the wet sand, a sound like a long whisper before the world is awake.
Scrape... and then a knock.
A hard sound, a secret under the surface. Mercenaria mercenaria.
I dig around it with my fingers, deep in the cold muck.
Pull the ridged shell free.
It's heavy and sealed tight, holding the ocean inside.
Another one for the bucket. The salt smell is clean and strong.

[Chorus]
Pemba has a recipe.
Garlic and herbs and a little white wine from the Reverend's cask.
She asked for a bucketful, gathered at low tide, while the air is still.
She calls them quahogs.
The book calls them hard-shelled.
I just call them clams.

[Verse 2]
I found a book in the Reverend's library, a dusty blue cover.
A fisherman's log, from 1865.
A man named John Smith, on Narragansett Bay, a place I've never seen.
He wrote: "We rake the flats at dawn, our hands raw from the salt and sand."
He used an iron rake and a wooden bucket, too.
I wonder if the steam from his pot smelled like the steam from ours.

[Chorus]
Pemba has a recipe.
Garlic and herbs and a little white wine from the Reverend's cask.
She asked for a bucketful, gathered at low tide, while the air is still.
She calls them quahogs.
The book calls them hard-shelled.
I just call them clams.

[Bridge]
The book said the shells were used as currency. As money.
Wampum, they called it. Cut from the shells of the quahog.
The purple parts inside, near the muscle's hinge, were the most valuable.
I hold one up to the new light, turning it over in my palm.
A little streak of purple, like a painted line.
A pocketful of treasure. A story from the sea.
But Pemba says they're better for soup.

[Outro]
The bucket is heavy now, digging into my hand.
I can hear the gulls waking up, calling over the water.
Time to go back to the kitchen.
I can almost smell the steam already, feel the warmth.
Pemba is waiting. The pot is on the stove.