No Mullet Run

we hold our peace
where the marsh grass dies.
Yesterday we torpedoed

the news at each other—
today, other developments:
the marsh grass is dying

closer to the bank each year,
a receding hairline even
Dad can’t ignore. It’s hard

to ignore something
on your head, though his has not
receded so much as it’s thinned

and softened. As the water rises,
so do the fiddler crabs, he says.
They’ll be up in the yard

before long. When we were
kids, we’d dig them out
of their dens, round them

in buckets for fish bait.
Dad’s had so much malignancy
dug out of his face. I imagine

eventually there will be nothing
left of him. And now, the fiddlers
are almost nowhere. Also the mullet,

they haven’t run this year,
not like they used to, when they’d
flick the encroaching tide, leave

a wake that nucleared far
past their intentions. Here, I do not
mention words like “climate.”