A Green Crabs Shell

字號(hào):


     Not, exactly, green:
     closer to bronze
     preserved in kind brine,
     something retrieved
     from a Greco-Roman wreck,
     patinated and oddly
     muscular. We cannot
     know what his fantastic
     legs were like——
     though evidence
     suggests eight
     complexly folded
     scuttling works
     of armament, crowned
     by the foreclaws'
     gesture of menace
     and power. A gull's
     gobbled the center,
     leaving this chamber
     ——size of a demitasse——
     open to reveal
     a shocking, Giotto blue.
     Though it smells
     of seaweed and ruin,
     this little traveling case
     comes with such lavish lining!
     Imagine breathing
     surrounded by
     the brilliant rinse
     of summer's firmament.
     What color is
     the underside of skin?
     Not so bad, to die,
     if we could be opened
     into this——
     if the smallest chambers
     of ourselves,
     similarly,
     revealed some sky.