View
223
Download
3
Category
Tags:
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
after a trip to the Everglades, in 1984 . . .
Citation preview
T H E S E A W E W E R E
Through the Everglades —
for Guy Bradley who died trying
to stop the rape of the egrets
Larry Goodell
!"
THE SEA WE WERE
©2010 larry goodell
a duende book digital release 2010
po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043
Photograph at Wild Bird Rehab Center in Florida, by David Gitin
T H E S E A W E W E R E
By the time the rhyme comes
Out of the confusion of chaos
When corn pickers are dodging the Kansas City Ace
And the murder mystery America is solved
Will peace come bounding over the prairie
And over the misfits whose time has come
Humming we are one, we are one
With the rage and the peace and the war ?
Cycads in the forest of primeval hearts
Born again Christians at home in the swamps
Multicolored alphabet cones
Spring lobsters and sea fans
Cabbage palmetto, and the royal palm,
Towering over all.
It is back to the swamps
Sisters and Brothers of America–
Tamia and Moon Vine, Wild Poinsettia
Coral reef fishes off the Florida Keys
Shell beach & rocky shores
And the Wild Potato
Raccoon, manatee, wild alligator
Spanish moss, & orchids
Perched on the trees
Bromeliads & festoons of mosquitoes
Wild in the air, the resurrection fern
1
‘
The common egret in the water lilies
Spoonbills & woodpeckers
Loggerhead turtles
Motionless looking from the brackish scum
At the pagan rite of passing America
Mangroves on ocean shores
Peat moss beds
Shelter to pelicans, ibis
On prairies of marl soil, stilts & terns
White-tailed deer, otter & opossum
Painted bunting & everglades racer–
Hurricane Donna upturned the mahogany
Giant straggle roots home for
Spiders' multi-tiered webs off
The Gumbo-Limbo Trail,
Mahogany Hammock,
Dwarf cypress near Tamiami Trail
And bald eagles perched off Florida Bay–
Down in the southernmost parts of America
Wet hanging in the air on our skin
Touching the tropics, down in brackish water where
Life began
Begin, again, no robbing of the plumes of the breeding egrets
No poisoning the wide entryway of slowly moving water
From the Lake Okeechobee in the north
2
‘
"The broad shallow grass-clogged river to the sea"
The glass-bottomed boat floating over the coral
Coral reef fishes, parrot fish, morays,
Trigger fish, shell fish
Ospreys & gulls over tidal sloughs–
Back to the rich emerging, tenuous diversity
Opening up the box
Of nature presents
Stung to the hilt
Scratching, and hot
Back to air conditioned rental Ford car–
Swept up in a plane, flight out of nowhere
Lands in the desert
Our family back home–
The naked summer air–hot & dry blows over
The memories of wet orchids hanging in the air
With roots exposed to
Waves of breeze
Growing from the only beginning of shallow water
Planet, birth, of hosts of hosts,
Dependence of eco-systems on one another–
With the male man, the world's only enemy
Clustered with knowledge of how to kill
Everything from A to Z
Here in mesa-desert, hot mountain-home
Cool in the evening
3
‘
To there where the heat hangs from tamarind to sea grape
Seminole, Cuban refugee, retirees, condominium
snowbirds, killer whales splashing turistas screaming–
Ten Thousand Islands to the Keys–
Let us bless and downright hold off death
For life to sustain our warmer strains
Our gentler lives that vigorously forge
Our basic tools from electronic wishbone wizardry of the East
To the multi-balanced orgone and organic
Thoughts furrowed out of the brain
From care to shining care–
The beautiful limited birth we are
Flamingos & sailfish touch–
Here on the bright desert shores
Where shells & brachiopods fall out of rocks
The sea we were, we are, we are
The sea we were, we are, we are.
larry goodell july 22, 1984
placitas, new mexico
4
!"
a duende books digital release 2010
larrygood@comcast.net
T H E S E A W E W E R E
Through the Everglades —
for Guy Bradley who died trying
to stop the rape of the egrets
Larry Goodell
Recommended