THE SEA WE WERE
Through the Everglades — for Guy Bradley who died trying to stop the rape of the egrets
Larry Goodell
!" THE SEA WE WERE
Š2010 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
THE SEA WE WERE
hear this poem read here. http://bit.ly/1wMzUAy
B
y 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
THE SEA WE WERE
Through the Everglades — for Guy Bradley who died trying to stop the rape of the egrets
Larry Goodell