#MIDDLEBURY
Eelgrass
Douglas A. Martin
I put shells there, along the lip of the road.
Bivalves from last summer’s dinners. dog eats
a charred rock.
I have begun practicing
to eat
as well
with my left hand.
to slow
let it go.
Don’t spit there,
but walk to another room,
another depositing drain
spider
still
on
enamel periphery
water still small circle
in a slippery basin.
About this poem
“I was struck by particular attentions in the work of Jennifer Wynne Reeves, a painter who also wrote and who I was fortunate enough to have the chance to hear read before she died. I still place a lot of stock in one of the earliest poetry lessons I learned – that the word stanza means room. I suppose I go in and out a lot and keep letting things in.” – Douglas A. Martin
About Douglas A. Martin
Douglas A. Martin is the author of “Once You Go Back” (Seven Stories Press, 2009). He teaches at Wesleyan University and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Douglas A. Martin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
