Snow Crabs
by Bruce Meyer
The crabs are there, melting into
their familiar habitat, fallen on
zoology’s harder times, patient
yet pure as the driven snow.
They are seldom seen by anyone
because no one ever speaks of them.
They are fauna’s seedless Clementines
before the word for orange was said.
Like memory of what has no name,
they bear the invisible weight of time.
They eat the silence of a hidden life.
Like a zodiac sign after daybreak,
or the silent truth below ocean storms,
they love in white and delicate bodies
masked from everything but a name
and multiply throughout the winter,
learning to sting in a veil of ice.
They count among the raw spring stars.
They pince the sun until it melts them.
A lone streetlamp cranes its neck
to count the diamonds of their eyes
Bruce Meyer is author of more than 60 books of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism. He won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prizes in 2015 and 2016. His most recent books of poetry are the award-winning The Seasons, The Arrow of Time, and 1967: Centennial Year.