The crab! Oh, so apropos.
Claw, grotesque and over-sized.
This death won’t know pain or throe.
It’s tyrannically civilized.

Like a crust of frozen snow,
it girds drift, and melt ‘s unseen,
but still will grow into a floe
as host grows weak and lean.
Later becoming gaunt and sallow,
it starts work deep inside,
building out toward the shallows.
And like all who succumb to pride,
the crab builds in its own image.
It makes its host low and hard —
a fearsome face of scrimmage,
with a shell well battle-scarred.

If you can make those scars your own,
facing that hard shell the right way —
deny cold access to the bone —
the crab may be kept at bay.