The Voice, The Vocation: Clamming Poem by Dennis Ryan

September 26,2004

But love?You speak of love?
I once read a poem written
by a father, a father's voice
so caring that I wished
I could have been that son—
the two of them clamming
on the beachnear the ocean.
I haven't heard that voice since,
save, in part, Whitman saying,
"Now it is you, compact, visible,
realizing my poems, seeking me,
as if I were with you."Even as
I write, I think about that father,
his voice—the clamming never
done,never completely done—
that decided my fate and vocation.