For Dan
We call them final mussels as if our meal
is a last rite. In a way, it’s not untrue:
so much of a friendship is constructed
by ritual—the reminders to bring a flannel
against the air conditioning, your plying
of the pot for escaped meat even after
the shells are stacked, empty, beside it.
And why not hope? More often than not,
there really is a wine-sweet gem uncovered
by your searching spoon. Dear friend, our rituals
will soon change. There will be other mollusks for you
to shuck. Perhaps some good crab to unclaw. Wherever
we are, there will be mundanity to celebrate. I lift
my glass. I wish you a loose mussel in every pot.
–
Emily Rose Cole is the author of Thunderhead, from University of Wisconsin Press, and Love & a Loaded Gun, a chapbook of persona poems from Minerva Rising Press. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in poetry with an emphasis in Disability Studies from the University of Cincinnati.