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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2009 : Wayne Christensen
CANAL FISHING JUST BEYOND
Writhing swamp air souls,
those muggy wraiths, click
like tiny bones breaking
in the hot fragrance of asphalt.
Our cool canal lies lower and lily-padded,
frog laden, bugged,
where time ticks slower
into nothing good but shade.
They mightn't have,
but I seen you
where silver sunlight seraphs shimmer
past pink flowers floating on
by patches of clear, dark water
toward that deceptive horizon to come
to merge with grass greening gray
distant highway must be not far enough
from that Sunday church we killed
four pretty girls in. Here
I seen you, where
boys and burnt, bitten old men
worship wriggling worms stabbed oh
so preciously, wired and strung to lengthy
amber bamboo poles nodding
at the tug of small, unseen currents.
The odd fish
caught in a day's wait
are cleaned by women,
once young girls,
fried and eaten
on narrow tables
in close sticky city kitchens
ten miles off
near 16th.
This bleached land where a man is
a boy with a thin bone caught deep
down in the mean part of the throat,
beyond relief, the daily pain turned bitter,
here did I see
you, though obscured by history's thicket
lurking in dusk's shadows
on the other bank among crooked cattails
slumped against the long legs of a blood
mangrove, that frayed and broken
straw hat tucked low,
the faded stars and bars bandana cinched
about your godhead.
You said "Where do we pray
when we've burned the house of prayers,
turned it to an abattoir?" I said
"Fish." and spit. "No one gets you."
Tomorrow ought to bring older boys, more men, fewer fish.
Between long liquid days, moonlit in the warm
mosquito breezes of a rich subtropical night,
my brown paper lunch bag
tumbles down this still warm bank,
settles to dampen and blossom heavy,
then sink with a slow and ragged soft-shell turtle
to the dredged murk of bottom
where you face the heavenly glow
surely tired
yet almost smiling
like before when here one quiet September
mourning
you decided to stop
and spit that bitter bone out red
This poem was a finalist in the 2009 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Wayne Christensen
I am 56, Florida born of Danish descent. My wife, two daughters and I operate a zenvironmentally friendly tilapia and mangrove farm on the edge of the Everglades swamp. I am an Associate Professor of English at Florida Memorial University, the southernmost HBCU in the US, and co-edit the school's literary magazine.
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