Is a common turtle really different from a crab?
They both make their ways slowly, across the dirt and sand.
The mouth and claw don't differ much in ways they're used to grab.
Could a common turtle really be a green-shelled crab?

I’m spiraling and sprawling out
The ugly parts revealed
Like a hermit crab
who’s had his shell taken

Hyperventilating and staring at opaque ceilings listening to the walls
They speak and when they do they whisper of me
They laugh at their corners and close in on me

They grip with brick hands
Face the floor
He feels what I feel
I will merge with him so they will be right
Let them walk all over me
Until I can no longer feel

In the swash zone
a desperate crab somehow overturned,
belly-up. Dome-backed, helpless,
she twitches feet and claws
grasping only air
as seagulls gather, smacking lips.

Shall I intervene?
Who do I favor, crab or gull?
Frankly I have problems with both personalities.

Can’t ignore a creature in distress.
(Who programmed that?)
Wiggle my toes into damp sand beneath the beast.
Flip.
With nary an acknowledgement, crab scuttles
sideways to a spot in the wave wash
where in a flutter of little legs she half-buries herself,
eyeballs above.
Seagulls scream curses.

What did I expect, a thank you?

Cooking beneath the shell
The meat of my thoughts
Like a hermit crab
The boiling of my dreams
Escaping as high-pressure steam
Through tiny fissures
In dye-shifting armor

I never opened up
I never bent or broke
and never cracked
But now is never
All I have, I’m giving back

Plug your ears
To the deafening screams
That no amount of heating
Can make edible
You are the hardness of my shell
Omnipresent and Incredible

As a hermit crab does she dwell
Safe within a borrowed shell
Here she lives in fear
Of the outside world
She feels so near

She exists here all alone
Only home she's ever known
Fearing what she'll find
Danger lies ahead
Safety left behind

No longer confined, free at last
All her doubts now in the past
Free now to explore
All the places
She feared before

somedays, Love is like an empty driveway. sometimes Love is a grizzly; when it wakes, it growls at you. sometimes, Love is a full moon. Love dances with You and forgets its claws and gnashing teeth. sometimes, Love doesn't know that its bites aren't supposed to hurt. but sometimes You don't either, so you forgive. sometimes Love is a cat that scratches and comes back purring. You don't fault it for being that way. Love is not easy to understand, but at least You are always willing to try.

his frail form
offers a salted tribute
to the warriors lying
dead and dying on and under
his geta.  A thousand
clacking sounds rise up
into the stormy seas as
these tiny samurai know
defeat once
again.

Hues of blue and gray
With a succulent sweetness
That begs to be savored
In the briny waters off the sea
They lead a life unseen
Scavengers in warm water
A lazy afternoon
Wire mesh and day old fish
Chicken necks on a string
Baited traps dropped in left in wait
Edgewater shallows and a lot of time
One by one they come
Chasing that string to the shore
One by one they come
Pull up the trap and catch what you can
Fill the bucket with sweetness
There is nothing quite like
A blue crab Saturday afternoon