Lobster boats at sea.

Fishers in yellow anoraks and 

big black boots,

looking like bees itching for a fight

 

Searching for traps left

two days ago.

The wind shrieks, scaring the water

into swells

like lumbering bison.

 

Boats are lurching and swaying.

The captured lobsters are grabbed and

tossed to one place or another; 

it’s “another” if you’re too young, too small

or a lobster mom.

 

Then you get more days and get tossed back into the drink.

 

But the other lobsters aren’t so fortunate.

Sure, the sea provides shelter; then it double-crosses them

by flow-forcing the crustaceans into the perfect trap -

a capture-machine that functions as a passive jail and restaurant,

baited with herring.

 

Then the lobsters become one of the sea’s crops -

seeded with herring, harvested by pots, hand picked by the fishers.