Anemone to Crab

Anemone to Crab

 

You proof yourself against the world

with carapace and spines;

your eyes, set in their pits of shell

are hard and lobed as spoons.

 

You choose a hollow in the rock

and when a wave comes over

you wedge inside the crevice with

a grip too fast to lever.

 

Thus you live encased in stone

when all around is whirled,

aloof, untouched, equipped to soon

take arms against the world:

 

all stratagems I shall eschew.

I’m naked, yet live more.

I’d rather blush and touch and sting

than live by shell and claw.

 

Poem by Giles Watson, 2013. Pictures taken at Fisherman’s Beach, Albany, Western Australia.

 

There are more images to illustrate this poem, but I will not be making them available on Flickr. The site has become so slow and cumbersome to use that I will only upload single images and poems from now on. It is pointless trying to share them in groups for the same reason. If any of my contacts would like to see more images, you can seek me out on Facebook if you send a covering message saying who you are. It is very depressing that Flickr has become less and less of a delight to use, especially from the perspective of one who used to take great pleasure from its potential as a text-and-image site. Now, the text is all but invisible to most users, and the whole site is so slow and difficult to use that I no longer have time for it. The "new experience" experiment is even more of a disaster: poetry, for example, is so cramped that it looks like prose. Flickr staff: you are not listening to a lot of your oldest and most faithful customers. Why?

 

Done