The
Lobsters
On nights of
sliced moon
the lobsters mass in vast arroyos
under the fields of the sea.
They herd together, rake crusted
mud from cartilage scuppers,
browse the silt for nutrients,
mate stiffly beneath the invisible sky.
Their minds
are like pearls set
in flexible carapace, their thoughts
less than bubbles that slip to the surface,
random arrangements of diluted oxygen
announcing the annual congress
and diaspora, as each cycle in season
their lives form a circle to the clacking
of thousands of claws and they merge
to surge across rock bottom, toward
what is for each a spasm of passion
which they fathom in ways we
cannot know, wrapped as they are
in a skeletal sheath, wearing their
selves on their sleeves. |
