Messenger

“The clam deep in the speckled sand” (Line 5) is the only concrete image that appears more than once in this poem as it reappears in Line 18 “sleepy [and] dug-up.” The clam emerges in the first stanza of the poem, “deep” (Line 5) in the sand, presumably safe, where a clam should be. Upon its reemergence, the reader can assume that the clam is going to be consumed by the speaker. The clam serves as a symbol for the speaker’s mind as she contemplates her “work” of “loving the world” (Line 1). Just before the speaker reveals her inner dialogue of worry about her old clothes and her age, she mentions the clam deep in the sand. In the last stanza just before the speaker reaches her conclusion of “how it is that we live forever” the clam appears one more time as “sleepy” and “dug-up” (Lines 18, 20). The clam rises to the surface of the sand: The speaker literally digs it up just as she has her ecstatic breakthrough about the infinite nature of all things. The placement of the clam mirrors the speaker’s thoughts as she moves from the beginning of the poem to her ultimate awareness at the end.