Sunday, January 21, 2007

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

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