Poetry 1 min

These Two Crabs On the Green Line are Going to Die

Francis L.

They lay silent on my lap in a metal
bowl part-filled with water. Soon they will

be boiled, but right now they are, like me,
passengers on the BART train as it meanders

from seaside peninsula to secluded East Bay.
For the crabs—which now stretch out

their claws and add their attempts at a
fearful clacking to the background chit-chat

and the whooshing of train on rails—it is
the farthest they have been from whatever

waters they called home. Next to me sits
a man or woman, sleeping out of reality

and into the world of dreams. Are the crabs
envisioning an equivalent phantasmagoria?

Is there empathy in that brown-black shell
before it boils to the blushing red of its death?

Each train announcement is foreign to the crab,
just as the map or schedule is foreign, just as

the lives of other people remain unshakably
foreign to ourselves. I have reached my stop.

I am getting off. I take the crabs with me.

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