Well friends, I just received word that my poem, “Manatee River, FL” has been accepted to 2012 issue of The Louisiana Review, and I thought I would post it here, in celebration:
Manatee River, FL
You told me once, as we walked beside the river,
that you were like the wind on the water.
You pointed to the small ripples distorting the reflection of things,
forcing small waves to foam onto the shore.
There was a smell of sulfur that hovered above the water,
clung to the air, covered our clothes.
I thought of the egg I found, as a boy,
between the window casing and the air-conditioner frame.
Just the one egg, abandoned in a small nest of straw and sticks,
turning grey in the waning summer days.
As we walked, you talked about how you wanted to go slow,
how you did not want to rush into anything.
You said you wanted to touch the surface,
wanted to see how things felt before getting too deep.
And as you spoke I thought about that pigeon egg,
that tiny death from my childhood.
I gathered it inside when it was clear the hen would not return,
looked at it for a long time.
There was a dark spot, like dried blood, on its side,
a spider-webbing of cracks below the surface, showing through.
We turned and walked back the way we came,
your voice cutting through the thick air, curling into small waves.
The shadow of a bridge shuddered upriver,
rippling in late afternoon air that pushed out toward the Gulf,
the surface of things changing.
I had held the egg in my palm, hard and cool to the touch,
and imagined the chick pecking through into the light,
imagined that something would breach the surface.
But even then I knew, through the smell of sulfur,
that there was no hope for anything below the surface.
Blah blah blah 