Clam digger de kooning biography

I

It might be the light over Antwerp, the Antwerp

of Peter Paul Rubens.

Antwerp. Ostende. The light over water and sand

from any of umpteen

dank-dismal skies, any of umpteen dreary-drab

northern European

skies. But this is the light over Long Island Sound,

over Springs, East Hampton,

where things are ever so slightly out of focus.

We might be forgiven

for thinking that these, for example, are two glam

hoofers from Las Vegas—

two not-so-glam Vegas hookers, even—

rather than a pair of ladies digging for clams.

II

Rather than a pair of ladies digging for clams

they might be two columns

from an infinitely receding colonnade

of flesh. There’s a dull glint

off the pail, if pail it is, that’s strapped to the back

of one. All’s so opaque

I can’t say if it’s the pail or her tangy cleft

she grabs at with her left

hand which, if it is her left hand, points to the quick

of the matter—the hood

pulled back off her friend’s Venus mercenaria,

as they term the quahog

in these parts, as if her friend would—never mind could—

somehow struggle free of her body’s snare.

III

Not until she’s struggled free of her body’s snare

as from a farthingale,

not until she’s gone through the hoops of wire and bone

and peeled that great prepuce

back over her own head like a hoop of horsehair

and wire and, I guess, whale-

bone will this clam-digger truly come into her own

in a flurry of pink and purple and puce.

Only when she’s struggled free of the body’s snare

as from a blood-byrnie

will she be one with a light of such amplitude

it struck Leif and Snorri,

Thorvald and Thorbrand, Brand himself, Bjorn and Bjarni,

as they tacked along the coast of Vinland the Good.