Blind White Crabs

 

 

Beneath a cindered canopy

spread low on a pumiced scene  

they mimic the clear night sky,

 

a sky they've never seen

but dream of, in that way   

minute crustaceans dream

 

in air-laced pools formed long ago 

by spewed out magma rivers,
now frozen lava flow.  

 

And as their dark grows ever darker,

they wait, in silent concentration,

intent on capturing some flicker,

 

some impulse that will push them on, 

lead them somewhere brighter,   

unaware their soft external skeleton

 

won't protect them, not out there;

that fragile selves will perish

beyond the cold perimeter

 

of this desolate, blackened parish,

that small, albino crabs have no defence

in a world that's bright and garish.   

 

And still they crowd, as if a sense

of something greater beckons,

incites them all to dance,   

 

to forget the world of sightless ones,

to leave, and live for one brief moment

outside these darker zones,

 

outside their world of frozen ferment,

in some warmer, finer place  

that is neither dark nor silent.

 

And so, in monochrome parenthesis

they show: without light, colour is useless.