Friday Poem: "Medusa's Wig"

Here's yet another Topsail Beach poem. Swimming in the Atlantic off the North Carolina coast after a storm can lead to a few shocks as big clumps of seaweed cruise at ankle-depth in the turbid water.

Medusa’s Wig

A swirl of seaweed, a cold clutch of tendrils, cruising
where ankle drives heel into shifting crab-sand:  
the undertow drapes your wading shin 
with this rubbery sargassum—
at that, your thoughts will yelp jellyfish! or octopus!
And you’ll recoil, gather, solidify like a tickled barnacle—

Wait.  There’s no jagged beak, no burning nematocyst
dragging its chemical hook across your skin.  Release.
Instead, reach down, tangle your fingers,
and drag it from the salt-dim bottom.
Pull it close, nose it like an opened book.
You’re caught in the slosh but don’t be afraid:
your lesson bubbles limp in your hands.

For all the force of waves and storms
that broke this clump from its moorings,
for all the cold lash of immense water,
there still cling, like nits between translucent strands,
tiny hermit crabs, chitin legs clenched
tight like skeletal fingers cold in twisted porcelain sleeves.
the size of rice-grains.
The curled abdominal knuckle, soft and vulnerable,
and the ant-strength back legs must be no larger
than the fishtail seedling inside a peanut.  Only these,
and a claw smaller than a beetle’s hooked foot,
clamp these drifters against the storm-churned Atlantic.

Now let it go, watch its strands spread, animate.
A fright-wig, slithery but snakeless.  Release your fear.  
Let your flesh float.  Hold what you’ve got.  

This poem originally appeared in the chapbook Techniques of Avalanche Survival: Poems.