Old Mangoes I Tossed in the Surf

The sandy rotting mangoes in the surf
that tumble softly— these that, fragrant, roll—

The coarse, the firmly plump, the briny-cold,
outsizing hands like a grip of beached shark—

The hermit crabs shall swarm them when the tide
retreats, in a great clattering of shells.

I kick the mangoes back out and stand before them;
they clumble abainst my feet in the surf.

Theodore Engelhardt is a Pennsylvanian poet living in Costa Rica, and working remotely. He is working on an enormous Medieval compendium of unscientific literary descriptions of plants and animals, entitled respectively “The Herbarium” and “The Bestiary.”