Giacometti’s Shadow
Trembles on a wall,
Lengthens on a stair, crosses
A moor, free to dwell
Eternally anywhere
Clay can be lit by a star.
A Growl
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Southwest Florida
Not loud,
But deeper than a lion’s roar
Under the very spot
On which we stood:
Never heard a noise like that before,
Never felt a fear like that before
Rumbling through us,
Uniting us even more.
We had strolled a while on the boardwalk,
Passing ancient cypresses
Scarred by fire or drought,
When the sound of a creaky hinge
Of a door opening closing
Drew our attention skyward
To a molting anhinga opening
Shutting, opening shutting its wings
On a limb overhanging the swamp.
That’s what made us notice
A congregation of baby gators
Basking on a log in the shallows,
Oblivious to danger, no mother,
No father in sight.
The growl
Shook every cell of the planks
Below our feet, arising
From a source we couldn’t identify
Until peering over the edge we saw,
Peeking out, its unmistakable
Eyes and snout .
We, who intended no harm,
Set off its alarm—
One step from being dragged
Into the water to our demise,
In which case the anhinga
Would be our living witness.
Note:
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, an Audubon preserve in the Western Everglades, occupies more than 13,000 acres consisting mostly of wetlands; its boardwalk trail is 2.25 miles long. The Sanctuary is a natural habitat for many species of wading birds, songbirds, and raptors, as well as for otters and alligators, and includes the largest surviving virgin bald cypress forest in the world.
Riddle
This
Doesn’t have a picture
Has a future
Shows nothing but is
Surpassing in beauty
Cannot pose a question
Simply completely
Contains an answer
Pointing nowhere
Why then these lines
Who knows
Who knows
A Tree in Early March
Out again, no trace
Of irony, a grace note
Upon every twig.
Mapmakers: A Sketch
If you look at them, they appear to be meaningless squiggles and scrawls or practice sheets for someone learning cursive. In fact, they are maps and mazes. The only way out. Drawings understood to be going nowhere—all the same, essential for survival.
That was the beginning, a begging for a door, a route outside.
There was an outside outside the window; there wasn’t any access to it, except for those squiggles and scrawls, lines in a notebook whose black & white marbled cover belied a forest within, rampant with birdsong and moss and the burble of a brook we would follow to its source once we were there.
Together we sat on the floor, brother and sister filling the time. Filling cold-to-the-touch faintly ruled pages, poring over them, turning a leaf to begin another foray into the world. Starting again. Taking turns. If you looked at us, we would appear to be going nowhere, taking turns doing nothing of consequence, making a meaningless script.
Look at them, children in a maze making mazes ending nowhere. Illegible as the future. Notebooks filled with time. Carbon from their pencils adding the slightest change in weight. It’s time to open them, turn those unreadable leaves.
