Fiddler Crab

To travel sideways--
lunging at the world with one


big claw, lopsided vision,
junk-heap of evolution's


elbows, prongs, and hinges,
uncommitted to the surface, skimming


warily--you bolt,
are poised even when still


to withdraw at the slightest
tremor, a shadow's digit,


your adventures thin compared
to the incremental journeys of a snail


(effusive as pleasure,
each blade of texture


wallowed and soiled),
with brittle fidgets touch


little to keep you here, scuttle
again and again


as if slung by a rubber band
or yo yo'd 


from the corkscrew 
involution of your burrow


which you will back in,
blocking


claw held aloft, bulged
eyeballs on the intruder, withholding 


your lightless, shallow, brief
interior.


--Lisa Williams