A Poem by Robert P. Arthur

For our March Red Eft video, our guest poet is Robert P. Arthur.

“To be part of the Chesapeake Bay is to have skin of water,” Bob Arthur replied, when I told him how much "Where Do the Crabs Go?" 
intrigued me. And he continued: “Did you know that crabs migrate to the sea and die, but every once in a while turn back to their 
former waters and live a second life?"  Life / death, human / crab, waterman / poet -- all commingle in this mysterious lyric of the sea.
                                                                                                                                                                             -- Suzanne 


Where Do the Crabs Go?

Where Do the Crabs Go?

Where do the crabs go

            leaving their shadows behind them

What presses their return from

            the autumnal reef

In the winter I shall row with a

            stranger beside me

Call him an old hand, ready with the sail
Let the stranger spend his knowledge

            of all things passing

The fiery sun that blushes to be born

The stirrings in the cottages

            and demarcations of the gull

I shall row from the darkness of my

            brain to where charts have no meaning

And my friends of the air cannot see one another

And should you move with me

            sidereally

beyond the shallows

Your petticoats behind you

And the tide at an oar

We may hope to discover no eddying

            of days, or hands, or shoals

Only ourselves—ghosts of light

            and tireless travelers

Some fisherman on the bay will look

            up from his catch and say

            with a blue sook listening

I am a living thing

I breathe and I am dying

But that is not what we’ll whisper

           with our voices of shelled things

In our skins of water

             
                        

          
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"Where Do the Crabs Go?" appears in the book-length sequence Hymn to the Chesapeake (Rolling Olive Press, 2015).

Robert P. Arthur is the current President of the Poetry Society of Virginia 
and twice a finalist for Poet Laureate of Virginia. He has produced books 
of poetry, plays, and fiction, including the book-length poem, Hymn to the 
Chesapeake. He's known nationally and internationally for bringing poetry 
to the stage, with performances in such places as Virginia, San Francisco, 
New York City, and St. Petersburg, Russia. He lives in Virginia Beach with 
his wife, Gray, and is the father of five children.