Monday, April 14, 2008

npwm 14

Limulus polyphemus


Its carapace outlives the horseshoe crab
beach house chatchka ashtry scams
aside, fishery vessels mine the copper
in their blood not blessed like ours with hemo-
globin, the true blue bloods of Maryland.
Arthropods like trilobites except they lived.
Red knots and loggerheads eat their eggs.
Regrow limbs like seastars, check your notes,
Paleozoic lives in them and they're not over.
Hoover upright ugly, salt marsh cord grass,
book gills so they breathe awhile on land.
Rough surf flips them helpless as ladybugs,
Mezozoic underdogs who outlasted dinosaurs.

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