Pain in the Grass

Take great care when walking on

A grassy dune or beach

Avoid the spiny sandburs

Is the lesson I would teach

Oddly it is classified

As a grass with flattened blade

The well protected prickly seed

Inflicts a pain I would not trade

To any other person

The one-seeded fruit may look benign

But as a kid the stalk of spurs

Was used like a cat-of nine

By bullies armed with barbed bouquets

A devilish construction

Persecuted mercilessly I was by

Weapons of grass destruction

The biological intent although

Is not to cause one dread

The seeds instead attach themselves

And from there the grass can spread

Food it is for larval forms

Of several butterflies

Like satyrs and many skippers

Just before they metamorphasize

The many forms of sandbur species

All members of the genus Cenchrus

Have caused a many manly men

To tiptoe along the seashells

The last thing I’ll say

I’ve saved for last

Please watch your step

For this pain in the grass

Spirit of the Sand – The Ghost Crab (Ocypode quadrata)

In mid-dark hours under a starlit sky

Porcelain apparitions flirt at edge of sight

Spirits of the dead that poke and pry

Rotten flesh-eating ghosts that haunt the night

Fallen sea stars crash to shore

An aquatic wish, a wish no more

Scallops and whelks ground into sand

A coastal cemetery where gulf grazes land

Midnight monsters rise from sandy grave

A four foot burrow and a daytime shade

“Fast of foot” Ocypode glides

Seeking beach line bounty of nightly tides

Scavengers of sorrow sift skeletal remains

Washed ashore by unforgiving waves

Bones and shells now picked clean

Are left on beach as tombstone memory

Coquina Clams and Mole Crabs beware

Dead or undead the ghouls won’t care

They hunt and feed and disappear

Underground to their shell cave lair

As sun arcs high up overhead

Predators hunt the haunted sand

Few ghosts emerge in fear as well

That they’d be rendered down to shell

Yet large stalked eyes help to see

While four paired legs aid well to flee

And one large claw is meant to scare

It’s hard to catch one unaware

But do not fear

The beast of the coast

After all

It’s just a ghost.