Fiddler Crabs

by Emily Scudder

The live ones
quick, pop out
               of sand holes of their own
               crazy-making.

They dig (and
when the sand
               is wet) roll sand balls
into piles, a semi-circle
               around their hole-door.

In the same way

it’s a ghostly thing, really,
               the way they blow
end over end, lightweight
               and dead.

 

Emily Scudder’s first collection of poems, A Change of Pace, was published by Finishing Line Press in August 2007. Her poems have most recently appeared in Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Jabberwock Review, Mamazine.com, and Harvard Review. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children. (10/2007)