poem

[Guest guest]

This poem was written by a mother who was living with cancer. She died this

past month. I recived it through a homeschooling newsletter and was inspired

and deeply moved by it.

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The Grace of Crabs

 

Deep calls unto deep at the noise of your waterfalls;

all your waves and billows have gone over me.

Psalm 42:7

 

I've been watching sand crabs plunge into the ocean.

They come from nowhere-up-ahead of me

and fling themselves off the two-foot sandcliff

sculpted by last night's high tide.

Their clawed legs gallop like slender fingers

running scales on a piano.

 

The sea comes to meet them,

a bubbling rush of foam.

On contact, the crabs pull in their claws,

allow themselves to float and be dragged away.

 

What violent surrender it must be to be greeted

and held by something so immense,

free from all attachments;

The ache of heart-rope tied

so tight

around my baby son,

who crawls oblivious toward the water,

and to my four year-old daughter

who, past exhaustion, runs into the waves,

over and over,

protected only by a pair of water wings.

 

I snatch them back again and again.

 

And wonder:

will I know how to abandon

my burrowed home in the crumbling sand

and leap out,

not held by gravity or love,

forgetting all resistance ,

to be embraced by vast deeps,

never looking back?

 

by Jan Provencial