August
We have a crabbing competition in the village every August. I was asked to write a poem that could be illustrated and presented as one of the prizes, and came up with this.

CRABBING
They are Nature’s submarines
The river’s dinosaurs
Older than Devon itself
They’ve been here for aeons
Part of Darwin’s weird chess board –
The River God’s currency- Neptune’s stork-eyed spies
Living on the river’s candy-floss,
The green ooze that tastes of sour apples and emeralds.
Sunken logs are their coffins-
Mud their cradles and endings.
Their claws grab at the retreating moon,
At the pink shadow of salmon.
They grab at the hoar-frost at the tide’s edge,
At the starlight still burning on the underside of leaves.
One long claw grabs at the Earth’s currency of clouds,
Another grabs at molton drops of sunlight,
At that regalia of glittering reflections bouncing on the river’s surface.
And at the Dart’s edge this August day
I hear a whisper of how
One child proud above the rest
Caught an army,
A tank division of crustaceans,
A bucketful of Creation,
And will remember it forever.

BP