The South

Nature Is

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After Seamus Heaney

Go down from the mountains to the coastal plain
before it gets so hot that you wish
to stay indoors. On a March morning

The swamp is almost inviting. New leaves
dapple earth with just enough shade to let
the unvarnished sun raise color in your cheeks

While a north breeze cools the ground to keep
snakes torpid and ticks at rest. You can hear
the trees flecked with warblers, and wonder why

You never thought such a place could welcome.
nature is not fickle, but rather patient.
go down further still, east. The swamp becomes scrub

Straining at life in wind-scoured dunes. Cold sky and sea
blend, stitched by breaching dolphins and diving terns.
nature is this, but also a shark-bitten loon

flopping to the beach and dying as you stroke its neck.
You are not like nature, straining for interpretation
from what is content to be. Go up and come down again.

Image: Congaree National Park, Richland County, SC, March 2022.

Embrace atop a Civil War Monument

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Deer, braced against the wind, graze among cannons
Upon the transfigured remains of the dead.

Ten thousand frogs, from craters-turned-vernal-pools
Cry out, lamenting the great dissipation.

On a snowy granite column, two figures
Gaze past each other, extending handshakes.

In glances not quite meeting, another hides,
Obscured in the blind spot of their cross-eyed stares.

His plight the reason for the rift here patched,
His name, his toil, his pension forgotten still.

He was a man, whatever past
Illusions and alliances denied him.

But the figures’ blank, whitened faces hint
That next time, they would rather work together.

Image: New York Monument, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, January 2021.

Hiwassee

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At the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers, silt swamps and rich farmland attract tens of thousands of sandhill cranes on their annual migration from the upper midwest to the Gulf coast. In recent decades, a sizeable population overwinters there instead of continuing further south. Just downstream from this merging point is Blythe Ferry, the site of the final forced removal of the Cherokee nation from their lands, where some 9,000 men, women, and children were held in camps for weeks before floating downstream or being carried across the river to walk what is now known as the Trail of Tears.

From the air, a river’s course is plain—
No surprise waiting around the bend
On this map for migrating sandhills.
Life is carried effortlessly as silt.
The flock pauses to dig mussels or
Pillage a farmer’s unreaped corn
Rejoicing in rattling trumpet calls.

From the ground, a river marks an edge
A line of knowing and not knowing
One side from the other as it flows.
Death is carried down cold and aloof.
Blood, waste, and tears washed along with mud
From a people massed and waiting for
The flood of pain to crest and recede.

Image: Original watercolor, January 2021

The Ground Knows

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A week of rain swells the runoff creek,
Its muffled roar suffusing the woods
As the blank-blue sky of Northern air
Sidles down the plateau to cradle
Our valley in momentary chill
Fixing in time every splashed droplet.

Winter in Tennessee is a pendulum.

Ice grasps rocks and branches, layer by
Layer accreting into crowds of
Overnight stalagmites and a lone
Ephemeral agate at the end
Of a string dangling from a footbridge
That sways with each splash, marking the time
Till warmth rushes back, which the ground knows
Well, watching an Iris bloom too soon.

Winter in Tennessee is a pendulum

Yellow light bursts from a stem, calling
January’s bluff for a moment,
But it dies—a raisin in the frost,
Hoping for a slice of spring before
The long flat note of summer goads it
To try for glory again next year.

Life in Tennessee is a pendulum.

Image: Ice pendulum, Glen Falls, Hamilton County, Tenn., January 2020