This Canon-cropped wall
immortalizes a moment shared zooms,
regenerates summers
splashed on Wood Neck Beach.
Clam digging fingers rake sand
bent knees kiss tide pool
before red-tide warnings surface.

Rinse shells several times, sand
sticks to swim-suited cracks and feet.

Pry clams open with sturdy knife:
add quartered, peeled potatoes
in an eight-quart kettle,
onions, celery, carrots with salt,
milk and flour
pepper and all day chowder,
chop fresh parsley, add the garlic
and creamed butter
on soft, Portuguese bread
roasted with white wine.

Snap this picture, remember it well
life blessed as a codder half-baked on a shell.

—A former art professor remarked that the sketchbooks of Clarissa Jakobsons, Aurora, Ohio, looked more like poetry than paintings, an observation that accurately predicted her midlife direction. Finally, years of teaching and parenting have led Clarissa back to poetry classes at Kent State University and reading at Shakespeare and Company, in Paris. A reader throughout northern Ohio and poetry editor of the Arsenic Lobster, she won first place in the Akron Art Museum 2005 New Word Competition. This summer she looks forward to kicking sandcastles with Gail Mazur and painting dunes with Bert Yarborough at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.