Читать книгу Long after Lauds - Jeanine Hathaway - Страница 5

The gruff curator expects more of us, a tide

of schoolkids maybe after a long ride, bus rowdy,

to his makeshift sea lab, tanks cleaned. Terms

on the white-board wall color the language

of mollusk, cephalopod, sea star, anemone.

Only two of us show up, ambling along the beach,

our glasses smeared by sea spray and drizzle.

The man, heavy, bewhiskered Navy vet, bad back,

decides to withhold more than he’ll teach. “Go on.”

We’re free, hands on, to poke inside the tubs.

Your fingertip sinks down a sea star’s arm;

tube feet feel their wet way up to the foodless air.

My fingertip nettles an anemone, pink petaled

succulent, friction in the barbs. Stinging

nematocysts, they poison inedible me.

The curator from his stool across the lab grunts.

I head for the sink, touch nothing but soap and

scrub. All he’ll hear from here on: a woman

his age washing, not clapping, not the brilliant

applause he’d spent the morning setting up for.