THE HERMIT CRAB

Photo from Unsplash.

What does the hermit crab learn
Before it vacates its shell?
Perhaps its calcified home grows
Narrow -
It’s Arthropod science, pinched tremor
Tells it’s bumped the limit:
A lie that bounds
The spiraled scope of its existence

I felt uncomfortable in myself
But the Maker made me again, movement
By movement in soul and sinew,
Running up my Fibonacci
Until I am no longer some soft-shelled youth
Indeed, shell-bound, now unbound
Beginning my May-tide peregrination

And I believe there is a sorrow within us,
Medicine that catches in our throats,
Arthropod science -
Bitter herbs we suck for feeling, 
So that as the day withers, we touch
The tickled afflictions in our souls,
Wounds of pressure,
And learn the sacred syllables of suffering,

And leave.

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