Blue Swamp
The blue swamp,
The tar like water.
There’s an eeriness to beauty here.
Possibly the blue swamp and I have the same soul.
I am often told my poems have similar themes in them:
The fascination with the vulnerable, the ugly, the strange,
and a desire to capture brief moments of beauty.
We are both skeletal cypress trees drenched in the luxury of Spanish Moss.
Vultures sit in the waiting trees.
Beneath them occasionally a blue heron glides in and disturbs the stillness of this place.
Warm sunlight finds its ways to set the warm prairie grass a glow.
Into labyrinths of dense foliage, I move.
The hardwood and water oaks
Reflect on the glass water.
With nothing between us,
The glossy voice of the swamp
blends with mine.
The gators in the water appear uninterested.
Everyone imagines predators to be constantly prowling,
But there’s predator in us all
Ignited by the fuel of fear.
I am stalled in the canoe
Stranded among the choked canals of water lilies.
I am not arguing or salivating or praying for anything-
The wind palavering.
I don’t suppose anything here recognizes it is loved.
Breathless, I confess, my love for this place over and over again.
Still the eerie pandemonium here
Is about nothing more than existence.
Everything appears to be minding it’s own business
And that makes us easy friends
In a time when the difficult labors of life and love
Bend to the godly sweetness
Of the seamless perfection
That is the backbone of the blue swamp.
Oak Roads: Poetry and Musings 