Poem of the Week 4/18/2012: A Green Crab's Shell

A Green Crab's Shell

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
 open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

 if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.

Mark Doty 1993

One of my very favorite poems, Doty offers us an artifact so delicate that it ends up encompassing the vast sky, the ruins of the ages, a traveling case, and the firmament...