A man wearing a hat stands on the bridge
between Atlantic City and mainland,
one foot in the roadway, one on the edge
of sour miles of salt-channeled marshland
kept apart from ocean by a long ridge
of streets, hotels and houses built on sand.
Cars roll by like dice yet he does not cringe.
He stands his ground, implacable, black hands
winding long thin lines around the wire traps
he’s pulled up from the brine and folded flat,
dropping captured blue crabs into buckets,
claws clacking, grasping at slick white plastic.
A barreling tour bus blows off his hat.
He grabs it, feeling lucky for the catch.
is a writer, musician, and gardener in Middlebury, Vermont. She is the author of two sonnet chapbooks, Wild Earth (Antrim Press 2021) and Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022). Her poetry has most recently been published in Verse-Virtual, Flint Hills Review, and Anacapa Review, and has previously appeared in Measure, The Lyric, Vermont Life, and the National Public Radio Themes and Variations program.
