Limulus polyphemus Crosses the Limen

gone adrift on the same tide,

hooves who claimed this shore before

a hurricane piled sand as

thin as their épée tails spiked

tidal pools before horses’

predecessors could even

dream of feet big enough for

shoes. Us overgrown shrews should

pull their name from the bubbles,

bestow those equine irons

xiphosuran socks—xiphies

sounds cute. Here’s to the xiphies

who’ll cross all the continents

well past hooves and hands unselved.

I’ve been on a bit of an Ursula dive lately. I just read Rocannon’s World, The Left Hand of Darkness, and her final poetry collection, So Far So Good, in the past week or so. Needless to say I’ve been enjoying what I’ve read. This poem uses the last line (as well as a fun gerund she coins, ‘unselving’) from the poem “Seaward” in So Far So Good. I’d like to credit ONLY POEMS DAILY for coming up with the prompt of using the last line of another poem as the first line of your own. You can check out their other prompts for saying goodbye to National Poetry Month: https://substack.com/@onlypoemsdaily/note/c-246556293?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=4clwo7

Attribution for the Cover Image: By © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15277132