Horseshoe Crab
____________________________________

The percussive God wears itself
out on a wall, where the moon
shows up blue in this king, pulling

us from our red show. Found on a beach,
scraping in the tide. Years, hundreds of
thousands it hummed to ocean

bottoms, settling the nadir
of its rising rings. Spit out on sand,
it blackened to an old tooth. But

to be one-limbed and round, perfectly
defunct intact within a circumference.
Surely the soul wouldn’t bother to go,

but slowly shrink to the innermost
concentric circle of the body
the less alive it became,

spectacle vehicle, already in place.
To be priceless . . . a wheel, ring, pursed
lip or what is it the century requires.