I’m posting a poem here with a bit of hesitation. It is a dark piece, and not at all representative of my writing. I blame the darkness on my subconscious. As readers of this blog may know, I grew up in challenging circumstances. In a previous blog, A Burial, I refer to a grim episode in which several of my dogs were poisoned. The family never discovered who poisoned the dogs. Each poisoned pet had to be buried. Since my father was absent, my older brother took charge, as he often did.
It was winter, and the ground was frozen. My brother was obliged to improvise. He found a bog, deep in the forest, in which the deceased animals’ bodies could be dispatched. The mud would absorb whatever was thrown onto it. This constituted a sort of burial, the best he could manage.
Years later, when I began to write, I searched my mind for inspiration. The poem posted below came to me, almost in an unbroken stream. There’s little doubt I was healing an old wound. In the poem I imagine a murder, in a swamp, but this time the murderer doesn’t get away. My subconscious metes out a rough justice.
Here’s the poem. Beware: It is dark.
Recesses
In the rustle of the swamp reeds
In the ceaseless crackling clamor
Of the swamp’s pursuers and pursued
A very careful and interested listener
Might have heard
The faintest sigh
An expiration of breath
Blended casually and perfectly
With the flow of generation and degeneration
So its individuality
Its particularity
Was lost
No one heralded its passing
Except the swamp’s general chorus
Of insect and animal activity
Which signaled without prejudice
The birth and demise of multitudinous creatures
In the wetness of the earth
In the dark and malodorous puddles
Seeping through an eternity of swamp grass
The smallest rivulet of blood tinted the ground
Blended with greater streams and
Became indistinguishable
From the enveloping deepness of their color
Through tangled trees and weeping weeds
He fled
The mute rebuke of her still presence
Propelling him
The hours since he killed
Darkened the earth
Until night dwellers rose from their nests
And joined the uncensoring cacophony
He knew this dense and murky world
It would have granted him a bed
Had he stopped
He could not
Panicked by the specter of her face
He pressed on
Past the creeping oozing things
The silent crawling essences in the mud
He was wet
From his excretions
From excretions of soil and plant
His shoes heavy with moisture
His clothes clammy
He became as like the swamp as he could ever be
And it became less a friend to him
He who confided in the swamp
Discovered its treachery
He was lost
The absolving obscurity which had drawn him
To commit this deed
Ordained his destruction
The first rays of sunrise did not penetrate
To the depths of the swamp’s floor
Rather they gradually colored the dense undergrowth
And muddy pools of its recesses
Only moments before those traces of color appeared
He fell
His body slumped to earth
Perhaps his head hit a rock
Or an exhausted vessel hemorrhaged
A rivulet of blood
Tinted the ground
Blended with greater streams and
Became indistinguishable
From the enveloping deepness of their color
In the depths of a wild and immense swamp
Amidst the hawing and cawing
Of embattled entities
One predator and his prey
Rested
The swamp protected the secret of its protégé
And with the force of irresistible passivity
Received the final traces of his crime
Into the fabric of its all absorbing life
Rhythm Prism Publishing 