Travel Plans
Explore the sweet, delicious South
where you’ll grow pretty over tea
and magnolia pie,
hear dark fragrant music
in sweet syrup of night,
and consider it to be
poetry well-spent.
**
Old Florida Creek
—for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
I will write of this,
my grey shadow
walking dripping paths,
and then realize my righted words
are wrapped here
in this place that speaks so piercingly.
I will write of sounds somehow clean
and sharp in stillness of air,
sun-faded musty roses,
crisp and shrinking on a pillow.
Is blue brighter here?
I dig deep into resistant rock,
water goes from trickle to flood,
and it rains in the trees.
Memory and experience paint the light.
**
Eugenia’s Ghost
Some say Eugenia
hangs mirrors in the trees
under ragged, lacy swags
of Spanish moss,
spreads her full skirts over sweetgrass
(there!)
lining the ink-black marsh,
twists tendrils of
long
brown
hair
around nervous fingers
and says—
“Gone is such a simple word”
but little else
(We’ve seen her picture,
hand-tinted.)
and adds her own stars
to the waiting sky.
**
The Rhyming Game
Brown blown leaves
measure our grief.
We dress our white gowns
with pale blooms,
watery-pink reflected.
We walk along infinity
for a brief eternity
until the river runs
red,
upturned,
clay,
and slippery.
