ON THE BEACH

                          

Swept up in a beachcomber gold rush on P.E.I.’s terracotta beaches

we prospect feverishly for the mighty sand dollar— with one buck

already in the bank... while up ahead, a gull bullies a hapless crab

savaging it with a jabbing beak... yanking it, flipping it over

in stark Wild-Kingdom cinéma verité and then, with a mouthful of

appendages clamped like clothespins in her bill and bomb-laden

with the cumbersome cargo, she lumbers herself airborne…

where, at an altitude of twenty feet, the stringbean legs pop

their joints like Legos... bombing our little Buster Crab back

onto the beach-head with a carapace-jarring thump! Whereupon

the gull, this… 'Jackie the Ripperess'… this angel of death...

descends with deadly finality upon her victim’s

now-much-handicapped gesticulations... When—

 

(fortissimo) Here I come to save the day! That means

that Mighty Mouse... is on the way!"

 

…Later, cradled in my cupped palms, our reclaimed-but-crippled

crustacean bogarts me his best grimacing grin, a wink,

a tip of the hat, and the thumbs-up… and with a k-plunk,

I sink him like a stone back into the safety of the surf

to live another day... to regale the little grandcrabs with

his tall tale of the fantastic flight over the sand

and The Rescue he’ll never tire of re-telling...