Poem for Thursday and Delaware Crabs

The Saint and the Crab
By William Logan

Along the campo, Manin’s bronze winged lion prowled
among the tanned intruders, licking their hands.
Pools of iridescent shellfish
lay open in the restaurant window,

a shop of otherworldly opals, the mussels’ sheen
the skies of a closed heaven, crabs flat on their backs,
their armor intricate trapped plates and escapements.
The squid slumped in its own ink, the octopus appalled

in its slime. Many and ingenious are the postures of death.
But look! There, in a corner, beneath a willowware plate,
a lone crab clicked its claws, creeping
over a casket of walleyed fish,

through a valley of oysters keeping their counsel,
only to shift warily under the shadow of a wine bottle.
Which saint, O saints, watches over the saintly crab?
The man of forks and spears, the man of arrows?

In the Ca’ d’Oro, the stiffened Sebastian takes
each arrow through his flesh like a skewer.
He wears a little napkin around his middle.
Saint, watch over the fragile boat of the runaway crab.

Let him steal his way back to the green lagoon,
go floating down the Grand Canal on his own motoscafo.
Let him take second life, a later martyrdom.
Let him wave his bent claws in a mockery of farewell,

lest we eat in his hollow shell his captive meat.

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Wednesday was a bit cooler than Tuesday, but we had big afternoon and early evening thunderstorms that made our cats hide for several hours and caused local flooding. So again I mostly got work done in the house -- VVA came to pick up a donation in the late morning to which I kept adding things until they arrived, and I listed things for sale on eBay for the first time in a decade (if anyone is interested in buying Tarot decks, Barbie dolls, or Voyager press kits, let me know). And I Zoomed with my friends at lunch! 

The Orioles game was rained out and postponed, so we rewatched What We Do in the Shadows before Wellington Paranormal was on, and Cheryl and I are watching The Orville together long-distance now that it's on Disney+ (which is awesome but just in time for them to raise their prices, I see). I love that they're now shamelessly the best Star Trek show on TV and I love all the women on the crew, even the ones who make decisions that enrage me. From the beach last month, here are a variety of the crabs we met: