Tonight I'm thinking back on how
we two rode our bicycles
up island from Oak Bluffs to Lobsterville
and somewhere near Squibnocket
( I love the island's Wampanoag names
Katama, Chappaquiddick, Tashmoo)
parked the bikes beside a tidapond
and waded in
what we saw looking
through kneedeep water
delighted and amazed us
all the sandy bottom
glittering and alive
there must have been at least a thousand
horseshoe crabs each one
no larger than a silver dollar
each with a translucent shell
like lightly frosted glass and showing
all their inner workings
holding one in my palm
a tickling sensation
the scuffling of tiny limbs
I doubt that many of us
think of horseshoe crabs as beautiful
but these babies were beautiful
and this was something I'd not seen
in over sixty summers
on the island

Today in Grants Pass, Oregon
out in the shimmering
swelter of summer's end
with wildfires burning to the south
I thought of how
as our planet heats up
we may be forced to build our cities
under water
it's the stuff of science fiction
but with that image surfacing
I thought about the horseshoe crabs
not crabs at all
closer to spiders
they've been around
we're told four hundred
million years
I've little doubt they'll make it through
and though I can't say why
somehow I find that knowledge comforting
And if the oldsters have only the beauty
of an armored tank
the young forever will be jewels of the sea