Sunday Poem: Anne Carroll Fowler

Hermit Crab

         Anything you lose comes around in another form
                                           Rumi

Part of yourself leaves in morphine dreams
and changes shape. You say last night 
I was a pine tree, a scrubby beach rose, 
a heron, stalking.
                 And remember
the night we lay on the grass
stared at the thunder moon.

I know you are afraid, but listen!
Hermit crabs outgrow their shells
and find others, bigger, empty--
whelk or periwinkle,
broken husk of a coconut,
coral or sponge. Some carry
their anemones with them
when they move.

Anne Carroll Fowler, Five Islands (Johnstown, OH:
Pudding House Publications, 2002).
Copyright © Anne Carroll Fowler, 2002