Apalachicola / (Shattered Screen)
Pulled a turpentine pot
from the earth whole.
Stand beside the foot
of that bald cypress—orotund
sun squeezed from the cheap
tree’s pulp. My mind is a weather
vane, an outdated paper map
and handful of sassafras leaves
at your boots. Nicked my skin
on sticky vines. Today, trucks
rumble the overwhelmed
horizon dust. This swamp we love
is heavier than any full moon.
*
Orange milkweed red then ash
black then a world of dogwoods
taken, then the turkey oaks
consumed, the lake water
gobbled and turned negative
into this temperature’s rise
from the breaking of leaves
and branches, the fur
on the smallest mouse quivers,
the deer and bear pushed further
and further from laps of waves,
the alligator motionless (one
eye open, one closed) and you
in your quiet house on the edge
of the forest sat in a room, drinking
clementine tea and cutting teardrops
upon teardrops from a long
piece of butcher paper and when
they fell to floorboards you
realized they could sing.
*
Ink as pulp.
Pulp as work.
Work as bark.
Bark as sandhill.
Sandhill as frost grape.
Frost grape as throat.
Throat as print.
Print as wild blueberry.
Wild blueberry as longing.
Longing as forest floor.
Forest floor as continuous.
Continuous as forest floor.
*
You will find the dried lake
north of a shaky “I love you,”
west of the circle of live oaks.
When you reach the sandhill
indicators, take three hundred
steps backwards into those
neuron bushes and you will
arrive at the bottom of . . .
Run, no really run
your forefinger over the jagged
cracks in the mud and follow
the language lines to the tupelos
that sit like ancients
on the opposite shore.
Did you get there?
Was it worth it?
Did you stuff a few flowers
in your pocket?
*
Vivid, sunburned forms
of heat rising as ghost plants
from the circular hurricane-
battered whole. The pines
bend to the salted wind
that tell and retell
their watery shapes—a scrub
jay flies through a hole
of this spider’s clever web,
a plant that turns away when
you touch it, exposed roots
whose existence should have
been carried out long ago,
unharmed, underground.
*
I scrolled through the pictures
of the forest on the treadmill.
Sweat dropped from my forehead
to which blurred a few
purple irises. I wiped it
away. Another picture that doesn’t
do the cypress tree justice.
I turned off CNN. Someone
was reporting from the capital.
This forest is unreal, I thought.
Then you called. “Do you even
know the history of the treadmill?
It was used for hard labor. It has
a terrible history.” 345 calories.
347 calories. I wanted to
throw away the phone, or to bury
it under the dried, pixelated
lake, but I also wanted to keep
the forest with me,
at all times, wherever I went.
*
Animal, animal, animal
burrows in the zigzag silk
grasses and sand. Hawks
circle the overstory like eyes
or the way you look at
something as it turns to longleaf
pine. Is that the way you
looked at me? Lost yourself
in a network of sepia roads,
June beetles soft on
the disjunctive ridges,
pearls of water, iridescent
jewels, make keystones
like moon craters
of floristic surveys.
*
Last year’s seed pods
open to silk fractals,
open to scars on cypress
trees left by early foresters.
Fire pours from these pods,
as vines of ink spill across
the xeric forest, vines
that grow with
the earth’s curvature.
You stopped and looked
at the sky, then across
the acidic, tea-colored
water, then held your hand
out to the pinks
in the compound leaves.
*
Seven years in the grass
stage—pine just a tuft of needles.
Other blades. Glass sharp
fans of green. Glass sharp
rays of sun. And more.
The sharpness of a 50 year
old beer can, flakes of rust,
half drowned in sand.
A squinting sharpness,
of clammy heat, a torso-
tight heat, of eyes locked,
that much of it, so much
that you can’t deny
it will take you—(and your silly
little heart pumping wildly
inside your silly little,
dehydrated body)
—and won’t let you go.
*
Plant as diagram.
Diagram as species.
Species as whisper.
Whisper as muscadine grape.
Muscadine grape as sweet wine.
Sweet wine as gallberry.
Gallberry as Ilex glabra.
Ilex glabra as run through the press.
Run through the press as poetry.
Poetry as heavy silk.
Heavy silk as overstory.
Overstory as Florida.
Florida as vivid forms.
