We had parked near it. No other people were on it. Where?
I was maybe four or five, my parents are gone now and
probably wouldn’t have remembered, anyhow, what
I can’t forget.
We lived in Minneapolis. We must have been visiting Florida.
It was a cold, grey morning, the crabs
were all like overturned bowls, drab, reddish-brown, crowded
together, death as one thing and thousands, nothing
with no face, wet, shining. I didn’t want to touch them.
I didn’t touch them. I don’t remember smelling them.
The ocean seemed nameless. They were horseshoe crabs.
.
John Levy
.