Fiddlers

At high tide, they begin the procession. Arms raised, slow waving claws, tipping fingers in the wind. The sea is calm. The crabs freeze with my footfall. They escape into the dark shore holes in an instant. In and out of the holes, they go. They peek out for safe passage. An endless wave of fiddlers, silently dancing along the dusty shore, under the cordgrass and over the discarded clamshells in dried mud. The birds circle overhead. The sun soaks up the puddles. And the fiddlers wave to one another as they dance and dig. They retreat to the holes in unison at a sound and return to the pebbled sand, one by one, with a shuffle and wave. Endless silent songs along the shore, told with the rise and fall of a sea of calm claws in the salt marsh sun.