Black-tipped Crab as Marriage

by D. Walsh Gilbert

— after Crab on Its Back, Vincent van Gogh, (Netherlands) 1889 and in conversation with “Canticle in the Fish’s Belly”, Hundred-Year Wave, Rachel Richardson

Netting and an ostrich-feather headpiece 
          pinned 
to auburn chignon braids gathered 
                    and lifted off 
freckled shoulders, 
                              off vintage silk and lace, 
while breaking 
          offshore, 
knee-high waves collapse 
tenderly at low tide. 

No one notices the crab. 

The sun. The sand. A walnut cello. 
                         And a gull 
among the guests. At the end 
of the vows,          while time eloped, 
a stroll 
          down Folly Beach, South Carolina, 
                    barefoot until 
pictures snapped    catch what’s missed 
by anyone not present. 

                              ‘This, shipmates, is that other lesson’: 

          the green copper blood 
          in a single-chambered heart 
          of a back-tipped crab 

Once turned onto its back, 
belly-soft, 
                    pinchers catch sea mist-- 
                    parched 
and praying for the moon to do its job. 
          The gull notices. 

We know 
down deep, sea crabs can’t feel 
          raindrops 
                    pummeling the ocean. 
Storms rift overhead, 
          but at the water’s edge, veiled 
in seaweed, 
                    upended         and overset, 
everything is different. 

D. Walsh Gilbert's piece "Fish in the Middle of It" also appears in Volume III of Ekphrasis Magazine.