Past poems

I've spent the last while digging around files on old CDs, looking for some digital versions of figures from my doctoral work. It turns out there's a couple of pictures I want to use in an upcoming presentation I'll be giving early next year at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting. Luckily, I've been using the same graphics program for all that time, the amazing CorelDraw!, so I'm still able to open and use those old files from my thesis.

While tooling around those old files, I found a few other things. One was this little piece of artistic expression I did at another meeting. I still like it.

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Sand crab poetry
(Inspired by J.M. at A.B.S. meeting)

A colleague asked, “Do sand crabs think?”
I don’t know if they do
But the matter their thoughts caused me to think
And this is what I conclude:

Sand crabs are truly poets —
In the tide they bide their time
Composing lyrics, sonnets, sestinas;
Counting metres and perfecting rhymes.

They might write verse of sand crab wars
And other epics of their race
(Though they excel in tales more personal:
Broken heart and molted carapace)

Now I myself am a skeptic, too.
“Where’s the evidence?!” I hear you say
Alas, they write their stanzas on the beach
And the waves wash them away.

26 July 1994