Mother Crab

— to Louise Fitzpatrick

The berried mothers laughed
when they saw your hollow apron.
They carried hundreds, thousands
of eggs inside of them.

You were blessed with two
that you cradled close
to your chest until they were ready to hatch.

When the gulls swooped down and pecked
at your pool, you stood high on your legs,
pincers raised in the air, ready to strike
while the other mothers cowered between the rocks.

You gathered molluscs and seaweed
to keep you strong, while the other mothers
scrapped each other and ate their young.

When the moon drew long breaking waves,
you wound your claws around your stomach
and braced the white spray, while the other mothers
were wrenched away by the raging sea.

And when it came time for your two eggs to hatch,
two tiny zoea, no bigger than the plankton
you had fed on, you carried them to the shore
and released them into the water.

And while the other mothers retreated
to their pools without so much as a goodbye,
you scuttled across the golden sands, your
tracks a pin-print on that vast shoreline,
waiting for your children’s’ return.

A mother crab, her job complete.

Charlotte Derrick is an emerging prose writer/poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She was the winner of Spread the Word's Life Writing Prize 2019 and was shortlisted for the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. Her work has been featured in The High Window Press, Open Minds Quarterly, The Open Ear, etc.