The Old Lobster and the Sea: A Poem

“A Niantic man bought a 17-pound lobster at a Waterford restaurant, then released the crustacean in Long Island Sound…Don MacKenzie told The Day of New London he knew the lobster that local children nicknamed “Lucky Larry” would have to be about 80-years-old to reach his current size and felt it deserved to live.”

I was born
(or hatched?)
the day the Japanese warships entered Nanking

I was
as blue-blooded as anyone else on the Long Island Sound
murky-eyed, mottled
skittering along the bottom
(dark as silt)

We don’t age like you
We resist senescence, like the sharks in “Deep Blue Sea”
I was as aware the day they threw me back

as I was the day the children named me Larry
as I was when they bound my claws and tossed me in the boat

impotent, waving my antennae

I would have tasted pretty bad by now anyway
draw all the butter you want

…meet me in Montauk