Poem: Black Spider Beach

 

Black Spider Beach

 

no sand, only pebbles,

unreckonable dice rolls of hungry waves.

 

and seaweed pungent along the wrack line,

mussed and disheveled,

jagged miles of flattened selkies,

shucked orgies in shaggy throes.

 

so so much

much too much wind

 

which licks basalt niches

and flutes through old weirs.

it tickles the purple stalks of Jonah crabs,

shriveling to plump their unctuous eyes.

 

“Boot Cove Bay”

 

always an old shoe here

and if it vanishes

another takes residence overnight.

a better name would be 

“Black Spider Beach”

 for the stubbly spiders, broad as thumbnails,

which percolate up through the stones.

 

in October

every footfall radiates arachnid.

if you approach the old shoe in the center,

scuttles ripple around your feet.

 

just an ordinary sneaker, the $-mart kind,

brine-dyed and beach-bitten.

but the spiders seem afraid of it,

as if the Ace of Spiders waited below.

 

twin Clorox bottles

nod from the intertidal zone,

white plastic foreheads

of those who tried.

 

====================================

8/28/25 .. no surcease never ever

7/1/25 ... mods  years of work on a few words.. not so smart, take note!

2/2/24 ... mods

5/25 ... more word changes... can't get this to cohere

5/21 ... lots of mods, though cosmetic

5/14 ... mods later in the day

https://www.mcht.org/preserve/boot-head/