Dungenessque Dungeness, Washington, The Olympic Peninsula

Crack me open like a crab amused at the strange soft fur along my shell. Tour my body find the emotional limits, dredge my character for small signs of pretense; you know they're there. Haven't others glimpsed claws beneath my hands? You listen so closely, stretching out my present against my past on a long net, laying bare

Boil me live in a scalding cauldron like you would a crab, turning your head as the claws fold in silently and you wait for the soft clicking sound. You can eat me tonight or tomorrow, or the next night. because the cooking's done; all that's left is to analyze what can and can't be consumed. Tomorrow you and your analyst will pick through the bowl of white flesh from my brittle compartments. There may be a joke or two, 'Who'd have thought the old boy would have so much meat in him?'

Ant and Aphid

Along a cedar crosspiece on my garden gate, they move past in deadly duet. A carpenter ant lugs a bright green aphid, its legs waving weakly in the breeze, and climbs the thick stalk of ivy to its nest under the warm wet eaves.

This tiniest of nature’s victims, does it leave descendants, a work history, even if no clock was punched? At its sudden violent passing will there be testimonials, or co-religionists obsessively scouring the garden square for signs of massacred remains?

Have not hired ladybugs headstrong and pretty as gaily painted tanks carried out such ethnic cleansing?

A red-winged songbird swoops down, plucks both ant and prey from the ivy and soars skyward —a miraculous ascent?

This morning, awaking, at once I knew I no longer had skin, that everything and everyone who passed my way would move me, the world’s pain as much as its beauty.

And look! The solar clematis sprung up along the fence are beaming apricot-white faces, petals boldly unfurled, determined as any natural thing whose hours are numbered.