Finding crabs

Arthur Attwell

On days like this we set out finding crabs
in the stream between the waterberry trees,
bending low to peer into the banks,
to stab our reeds into the slope,
to feel the tug - and he's there
hanging monstrously, stupid,
and as we lift him off the branch,
two fingers under the hard shell,
his legs uncurl and curl, his straining eyes
gaze like periscopes, stretching out
sizing us up, sizing him up,
two fingers under the belly, easy
until once I felt the fleshy underside
of a crab giving birth, an open crab
freeing her offspring in the water,
releasing her young, sowing crabs
into the gaping caves where she saw
the spikes stuck deep in the dark mud,
and us running home, downstream,
screaming at her soft unguarded belly.

LitNet: 20 September 2005

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