Finished the Adrienne Rich-My version of "Diving into the Wreck"

Shoveling the Wrack

First having read the Book of the Dead
and packed the sand bucket,
and tested the surface of the shovel
I put on
the waterproof slick coat
the chunky boots
the heart and polar scarf.
I am doing this
not like the Ugliest Catch
with their scraggy-haired crew
aboard tower tossed seas
but here alone.

There is a tangle
of kelp
the kelp is always there,
piled hazardously
at the high water mark

I know where it is from,
I've always known
somehow-
it reeks of death
and teams with orange plastic rope

I bend, touch the slime,
pulling strands of nylon, still
the tangle remains
the rot envelopes me
green bulbs
of kelp
bladder of ocean air

I scrabble
my scarf entwines weed
I burrow like dogs digging treasure
and no one tells me
where the sand
will begin...

At a glance the mass is green and then
it is kaki and then brown and then
beige I am smothering in sand and yet
my shovel is mightier
it strains my muscle with leverage
Till the ocean bubbles up
to collapse the hole
I am capable alone
To dig my hole and bury
this wrack of life.

Then: At the beginning
my life grew upward
surrounded by a forest of kelp
Many strands
among the rocks
and the weight
was buoyant in the waves,

I came to dig through the wrack
The blades are the experiences
The stipes are life.
I came to see what was salvageable
and what pheumatocysts intact
I grip the shaft of my shovel
tense my muscle
scooping and anticipating
treasures buried.

The life I lived for:
the wrack and not the sand
pieces of vegetation, not the ocean.

The seaweed flies swarm
upward toward my face
disturbed in their feeding
attracted by the rotten smell of kelp
their maggots gorge
on gelatinous fiber
eating away at membranes
of memories stored in gas-
filled bladders.

I spread the kelp
on the dry sand shelf, nudging it,
But the shovel is not enough-
My hands need to feel
The putrescence of life.
it coats my hands
as the flies invade the nose,
the mouth,
the ears.

It makes a bed when spread to sea,
a mattress to bear my weight
green strands grow from my sides
Medusa hair of kelp.

It’s hard to see
where my life begins or ends
on the high tide line.
The ocean nips
at my ankles.

Between the wrack and rock
below, above the wave
the harvest continues.
The sand, the kelp,
the shovel
Begin again
in a Book of Death
where my name is written.