Dance of the Dungeness Crab

Before her new exoskeleton hardens,

she comes on to him in the eelgrass

and sandy bottom not by flirting

with her purple legs or her white-tipped claws

that clench oysters, tiny fish and clams.

She lets go her urine, so wonderfully

full of pheromones and he is on to her

tucking her in a pre-mating embrace.

Such summer love this holding,

this belly-to-belly nudge among the mussels

and barnacle reefs under the swell of waves

so coy in the silence of love

before she urinates on his antennae—

her greatest come-hither, her valentine-be-mine

in the low intertidal zone.

River Dancer

The river moves to the music

of drum brushes, sax, white dresses

and heat, swishes of sand. She spins

a groove against the bank, caustic

as castanets, flashy as fan dancers

what gypsy jazz does: nomadic guitars,

small-hammered rhythms of violins,

double bass blasting in back eddies, fat

fat harmonies, the water swilling, swishing.

To dance with her you slide your skin

within her skin, fold the cold into your breathing—

a jazz rant for famished swimmers.

Sizzles like flapjacks. Fizzles like swizzle sticks.

The river, she bows and bends, blends the hum

of glacial silt with melting ice. She bends

unendingly. Take her hand. Fall into her sway.

She will catch you. Hear her tiny-tap

through mountains and valleys

the vernacular backbeat of snow now

vocal with a stirred-up thrum of dance.

Crocodile Jazz

She’s an agile Aphrodite, sly with a V-shaped jaw,

hears her babies calling inside their eggs. Fire

inside her eyes but so cool, she never sweats, best

as bassist slapping time with her tail, bites down

rhythm thousands of pounds per square inch. Behind

her third eyelid she’s keeping time, miming the wind,

spinning a theme of reeds. When she holds her breath

for an hour—more power like a curse-laden blues.

Gaping mouth airing out her lungs, strung-out

on nightclouds, on notes of the swamp’s suck

and squelch, fractures a phrase, more spinning,

jazzes the day and dark then crunches pebbles

in her jaw, crazy notes punched like a sax.

Song becomes water, unfastens the swamp.

With bony flaps in her throat she drumbrushes,

screeches a backbeat, thwaps diddly whap-whap.