Page 16 - WTP Vol.VII #2

9
Crystal River
floating face-down in the jade-colored cove,
winter sun on our backs, limbs loose,
trying to imitate the way the manatees seem to float along the shallow bottom, trying to lure them
from their avid grazing to us, fingers aching
to brush their barnacled sides
the water is so cold when you climb in
it stuns you. for a moment, you can’t breathe. unfamiliar cling of the wetsuit
reinforces the sensation, like a strange rebirth. you want to splash and flail, but you don’t want to frighten the creatures away, you don’t want to stir up any silt, and obscure them
from view.
the spring itself entrances us, its bubbling resurgence, how this pure water stems insistent salt’s encroachment from the Gulf,
though a good storm can suck it all out to sea,
Super Blue Blood Moon
leaving the channels dry, then come flooding back in a violent pulmonary action, and for a time,
the salt’s triumph withers all the grasses.
We all become paparazzi
Scrambling with lens and shutter
For close-ups of that visage.
View from a northern metropolis: Windchill in the negatives
Industry streaming white plumes
Into the night sky.
The exhaust of my own pulmonary engine Floats like an offering up to a flat, blue coin Burnished against the cityscape.
We can only hope to be
So clear and cold
And rare.
but now, all is calm, as calm
as we strive to be, hyper-aware of our
alien status, intruding on this domain
of water birds roosting on every post and sign, mangroves anchoring themselves to muck,
the banks where draping yellow jessamine vies with the Spanish moss, and thickets
of Chickasaw plums are already blooming.
man is actually not the leading cause of manatee death, but pneumonia. which is not to say we don’t hurt them, because of course we do. in fact, we identify them
by their scar patterns.
we pray for them to come near,
to raise their whiskered faces to ours and share the air with us,
mammal to mammal.
LauRen SchaRhag