Stanley Pelter: of crustaceans who, too, get born

.

night moon
limpets born
to rocks

Inside a saturating mizzle, newly born crustaceans stick to host rocks. Moon tides, an early morning procession of fish bone waves, bird filaments, grains of last night’s dreamy wind, wave rim pulses, footprint debris, distil but cannot disturb such glued closeness. Even if there were a sense of smell, of passing sounds, they have no eyes to see, no ears to hear. They are craven to a treadmill of crevices filling. Every day, every night, they compete with salt water that empties, refills, again empties. Know nothing of much else. It neither drives in nor drives out movements of a young girl’s breasts in a long running day. Such a varied pace of wind-suckled nipples in nights turned to gauze.

rich cove
unaware of problems
tide exits

All this time newly formed limpets grow. Imperceptible proper shapes expand into attached cracked rock textures, a symbiosis of shared stains, of colder fossil fish prints. Venus uncovers from a cast aside dress, fluorescent flesh spreading through many lovers. She drifts beneath a sea sliding surface, her body a saturating skin over a million crowded shells. She breezes effortlessly back, sways forward in time with her endless flow. Explosions of silent births are unaware of her genetic presence. Tumbling fingers explore unseen seeds inside each.

with venus
comes an entry to secrets
a sea nursery

by Stanley Pelter

Claypole, Lincolnshire, England