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From Possum Nocturne:
Swamp Blossoms
Here is the watery grave. We are not
slave to it. This is not forever.
The ghost of stone lifting as statuary
in the old field beside the sleeping lake.
How pale the sky appears.
The skin of it representing itself as light.
Blossoming and calling and calling.
And from these shallow waters
the yellow flag and pickerelweed
and water lilies aflame
with summer. This is what it means
to cry out like peeper frogs and chorus frogs.
What it means to be a cottonmouth
slipping like ripe fruit into the lake.
How maligned the night is:
the old skull of moon blooming
like bone amid the swamp.
While the young lovers are slipping down
to the earth, offering their naked skin
and blood to the mosquitoes.
Anointed in starlight. The ash of water
congealing into mud. Surely a child
will be formed in the young woman’s belly.
And then the rains will fall. Stirring the waters
into foam. Washing the body. Then later
the child will be born in the cabin
by the lake. The blood blossoming
on the bed sheets. We are not slave to it.
The plosives of wings outside the window
as the cranes and egrets take flight.
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Raising the Dust
The mud in heaven must grow thick
with flies in summer. Celestial flies
that lift themselves above the tall
stink of grass. And what clings
to the bottoms of my father’s boots
is holy as pig manure, damp and alluvial,
tracked into our mother’s kitchen. And so
the smell of ammonia in the air, the sloshing
sounds from the bucket my brother carries
two-handed from the sink. Always the mud
and dirt that find their way into the house—
field mud congealed with bits of stone
and hay and grass. Loose earth collecting
in windowsills and stairs, dust seeping
from bookshelves and overhead fans,
handprints smudging countertops and walls.
Everywhere grime gathering like the leaf
meal beneath our oak trees beside the barn,
the trees that empty themselves each fall
until they are bare skeletons, that make
of the earth their own dark decay.
And so our father’s body, that fine salt of dirt,
unneeded now, loam that once was drawn
from the earth to make a man. It was in
our back field where we found him,
face down in the mud, a hand clutching
his chest. He must have climbed from
his tractor and made his way as far as the fence.
While our mother, not yet knowing, on
her knees in the kitchen, leaned her weight
into a blue sponge to make the floor shine.
Read more sample poems from Mechanical Fireflies
or Black Tupelo Country and Where We Come From.
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