T H E S E A W E W E R E

Through the Everglades —

for Guy Bradley who died trying

to stop the rape of the egrets

Larry Goodell

!"

THE SEA WE WERE

©2010 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

T H E S E A W E W E R E

hear this poem read here. http://bit.ly/1wMzUAy

By 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

T H E S E A W E W E R E

Through the Everglades —

for Guy Bradley who died trying

to stop the rape of the egrets

Larry Goodell