"wetland" poems
The wetland is in its daylight beauty
the calm water mirrors the still blue sky
upon the pond among reeds and cattails
are two elegant, wild white swans
mysterious and graceful, reflecting
the charm of Thailand and her people
Apr 5, 2018
Apr 5, 2018 at 3:34 AM UTC
undress the burden that you wear
leave it rot on wetland
be thin and simple when you'll travel,
all the ways are now more narrow
choose the best entrance between all,
stick with it until you will find
a sense of peace in your remained heart.
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 1:44 PM UTC
Old eyeglasses on wetland.
Deep footmarks in cold sand.
Green tide takes all.
LazharBouazzi, January 11, 2017
Jan 11, 2017
Jan 11, 2017 at 1:56 PM UTC
Explosion of the white tree,
A synapse in the damp air.
The fluid around the corsair,
Ambassador of the secret;
The perfume of a comet
Descends upon the wetland.
A goosebump stretches my hair;
Ripples forming across the sea
As nostril and flowers meet
Miles and miles without end.
The green flame always return
In a frenetic haze, a burst of fire,
As the solar wave caresses the earth
At welcomed glances, so soft a fur.
A last effort renewed forevermore;
Delirious poison continually brewed;
An elixir against the veil of dusk;
Cause and effect from dust to dust.
As the mind steps out back further,
It finds itself returned at the core,
Til all of Spring elapses.
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 11:53 PM UTC
*First light in the Hudson Valley
Arbor Day of April, 1970.*
Adrenaline coursed through our young
bodies, our hearts on fire with purpose.
As we rode our bikes, walked, or jogged miles
to our rural high school, red-winged blackbirds
called out from the misty swamps.
Beautiful but invading, acres of purple loosestrife
were rapidly taking over their wetland habitats.
Harbingers of the forests, blue jays issued
warning cries from deep in the woods,
where blights were killing our trees
with increasing frequency.
Three of us rode together, cycling in relative
silence, until we came to a meadow
selected for our early breakfast picnic.
We feasted on special fruits and cheeses,
hungrily stuffing in rare treats.
One friend began to send iridescent
soap bubbles into the chilly air.
Up they rose, up over the soft, puffy cloud
of her reddish curls, and into the dawning sun.
One bubble landed, unbroken, in the cold, dewy grass.
We stared at it, somehow understanding that here
was a delicate metaphor for our own fragile planet.
Approaching our school now, we breathed deeply the fragrance
of apple blossoms from commercial orchards all around us.
The spraying of pesticides had yet to be banned.
We were sleepy in our classes that morning;
most of our teachers understanding that we stood
now for something worthwhile, that we believed in,
and they smiled with kindness, some even with approval.
Our principal agreed to an awareness-raising slide show
designed for our fellow students, teachers and parents.
An intelligent man, he was admirably tolerant of the wave
of changes that our generation brought with us.
Smoke stacks, polluted water, and dying wildlife
flashed onto a screen in the darkened auditorium,
accompanied by the vivid symphonic power of
Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring'- a score so revolutionary
that a riot broke out at its premier, in May of 1913.
We had no idea then how much worse things would become.
All these years later, we each do our part, blessing
the efforts of our children and their children,
hoping fervently that we are not too late.
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 2:37 PM UTC
With these eyes
I've watched
woodlands become housing estates
wetland drained
it's wildlife killed
fields plowed by roads
and hedgerows and ancient stones
torn down
and
with these eyes
I've wept
for the village
of
my childhood.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 9:32 PM UTC
My poetry is an acquired taste,
So come, dear one,
Place your tongue in my mouth.
Pace yourself, there is so much,
Spoke and unwritten,
That fruitions only when spit-shared.
Flick your tongue-tip to mine,
Sealing bond, the salt caramel of my rhymes,
The iambic meter of my tamarind prose,
The buds, flowering, poems forming,
Watered by the admixture of joint, minted saliva.
My poetry, so very complicated,
Hints of currants and ash,
Soil volcanic, basaltic vowels, oh's and eyes,
Cursed verses that commence with I,
Nonetheless, despite soil inhospitable rued,
Compositions flourish, born wetland soluble.
Yours, for the taking,
Yours, for the tasting.
You place your fingers on my waist,
My body of work to contemplate,
My ditties, you spit out,
You want courses, not appetizers,
You want truths, not fluff, lies, menu tastings.
Columbus and Magellan, thy fingers named,
Trace the curvature of my ***
With tip and tipsy stroked caresses,
You laugh with the pleasure of all the sssssss's.
Hissing all the day your satisfaction,
Capturing my writs, by your tongue's duress,
Recipient-thief of my literary largesse.
I am dressed all in white,
Stripped bare to my native coloring,
Except for two brown nippled spots, you lick,
Imbibing milky thoughts from fountain-heads *****
Savoring, relishing, stanzas that praise love's flavor.
With every line, every word-painting accessioned,
You make my soft parts hard,
My hard parts soft, but my liquidity,
My tears, they, that, you drink straight,
Licking, liking, and oohing and ahhing,
You tongue curled, upside down arching,
The storage point of your seduced gatherings.
To drain me full, your incisors cut,
Straight lines, entry points for your *******
Taking, draining, leaving nothing,
Not even one aleph or bet escaping.
When you acquired my poetry, my verbosity,
Pillaging soul's hiding place, took and *****
Your acquired the best, breaking my nape,
Imprisoned on and by my island's seascape,
Blanched and pained, a blank tape,
I am tasteless, witless, mockingly, tongue-tied.
Sep 14, 2013
Sep 14, 2013 at 12:23 AM UTC
pale herons huddle
along a bank of grasses
like whitecaps, abandoned
November in the wetland
c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 3:55 PM UTC
If you'll be the sea cliff, then
I'll be the rollers--
breaking on your heart, oh!
ardent lover.
If you'll be my snow field, then
I'll be your Spring sun--
hot clouds of steam rising
when we are done.
Then I'll be your fog bank, if
you'll be my wetland--
secret caresses from
velvet-soft hands.
If you'll be my seabird, then
I'll be your night breeze--
lift you in ecstasy
over deep seas.
Then I'll be your night sky, all
swimming in moonlight--
lighting your way to my
heart here tonight.
Jan 27, 2011
Jan 27, 2011 at 7:14 PM UTC
The April morning's quiet
and so is the November.
Wherever people outnumber trees
or the dominant cover type
is unquiet. Nothing wrong with that.
Walt got it right, and Jane Jacobs:
the city is an experienced,
used beauty. Her toes are long,
nails thick and hair thin. Yet
her kisses can be sweet; or
smell of **** All my life I've tried to point my window toward
some narrow wedge of nature.
On ****** Ave., over the roof
beyond the chimneys to the park
where every dog was walked.
Could I survive soot and an air shaft now, pigeons and cats,
or even a desk in the legislature for my lot in life. How about
prison like Etheridge Knight,
Nazim Hikmet?
I've gotten soft.
When he builds that house in the pocket
wetland my window now looks out on,
the developer will have given me what I need.
Amphibian mortality,
gravel, fill,
oak, ash and maples felled. Good
to the last drop is our bitterness, our love.
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 11:03 AM UTC
My internal landscape was once a wetland. Grasses and herbaceous plants sprout from the ventricles of my heart. My rib is a birch tree, a deciduous hard wood crowned with thin leaves. My veins are wild ravines. Inside it is the torrent of rain water that keeps me alive.
My heart is a beating water lily, eternally blooming on the lake of my blood. I was a sullen mist, and I loved it that way.
But they mistook my solitude for loneliness, the crowd, the clever engineers. So they loaded sands on their trucks, sacks after sacks. They opened me up, covered my wetland, and built a city inside me. They paved roads. They constructed buildings. They opened cafes and pubs and restaurants. They turned on their neon lights.
A rave party is inside me at night, and they won't stop until I am filled with cigarette stubs and empty bottles and used issues and half-eaten plates -- litters and grime that I have to clean every morning of my life. My gutter is overflowing and they call this happiness.
I call this wreckage.
I moved close to the bed, pulled the sheet and laid down. I tried to remember my by-gone world -- my birch trees, my herbaceous plants, my wild ravines, my water lily -- before I was converted into a rattling shell called Happiness.
You wrapped your arms around me and press your face on small of my back. My spine was a hard wood once, and every October it shed its golden leaves. "What do you want?" you asked.
The neon lights and the avalanche of noise from everywhere drowned my thoughts, and all I can do for my defense is curl my mutiliated body. "Love me until the end of everything," I whispered. "And understand that this is not a plea."
This is a burning desire to have my wetland back.
Feb 18, 2017
Feb 18, 2017 at 12:13 PM UTC
The survivor,
Outlived the dinosaurs,
Pathetic creatures running from the sun,
We stayed safe in our wetland,
Feeling pretty clever, pretty grand.
We terrify,
Our teeth are sharp,
But we swim as smooth and silent as a harp,
I'm smiling,
Smiling at you.
Aug 28, 2012
Aug 28, 2012 at 6:04 AM UTC
Once told of words, in worlds, waning with my will.
Old and trembling, emanating, the serrated slurs, serenading the sanctum of binary stars, singeing the seams of sleeves, and revealing the scars from afar.
Distant stars born, of the storm.
Whirling waywardly, in the wizardry of windless cities blowing away,
Wading into the wetland droughts of water houses, unsettling the doubts, anchored on land, in a flood of mans, love.
Drown
In the shallow nouns of, the haphazardly hallow, in the hollers of happiness, hugged in the hellish habitation of holograms dancing for the sun,
Long after the run, ... ended,
In the stunned patience, of forever.
Death is in the favor, of moving on.
Not am i gone
yet.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 12:46 AM UTC
First person singular prohibited. In order
to be more crow.
War! war! war! war! war!
Then there's that lowland wetland bird
around the stunted red pines crying
Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy.
Hear the redwing blackbird chirring
Her, her, her... she
as one might expect, Spring.
Words for birds
since they're inaccessible. Aim
binoculars left, right, up, down, missing every time.
At the piano recital
Aaron made the penguins run, run, run, not waddle,
from a hungry polar bear!
Everything passes, even a massacre,
but birds outlast cars
and words like chemical and holocaust.
Woodpecker climbs oak,
Connecticut.
Not one neighbor heard the knocking.
The voice of a pewee
whose nest has fallen out of the tree.
Oh my! Oh me!
What did the wood thrush sing
that summer evening
teaching its young thrush meanings?
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:49 PM UTC
Evelina’s fence of lichened cedar
slouches at the wetland border
her willows wildly weep
on silken cattail shoulders
the neighbors say she’s crazy
snidely call her Javelina
she's sane as any one of them
this brilliant winter morning
Evelina speaks of weather and dogs
hers, a Chihuahua named Fawn
mine, a Frenchie named Sparky
the weather, typically Northwest
in parting, sculpted driftwood
spiraling tornadic rings gifted
between palms roughly
worn by time and sea
Evelina’s yard is thick with trees
the neighbors want cut down
for now, she’s doing all she can
just holding swampy ground
each morning wakes triumphant
to beachcomb on the shore
pockets weighed with treasure
this moment, nothing more
Jan 17, 2017
Jan 17, 2017 at 9:58 AM UTC
That which would not follow you into the night
Will not be there in the morning
That which will not be there in the morning
Will be hard to find in the afternoon
And when you’re searching before the sun goes down
You’ll stumble on a log
You’ll trip and fall into a marshy wetland
And you’ll be wet
You’ll be consumed by nature
Taken into her heart
Ripped into shreds
You’ll miss her, but she won’t even think of you
You’re a part of her in the same way that her breath is
Each time she expels you
You return to her
So why should she worry?
You’re in her hands now
And she can squeeze you if she wants to
When you hold your breath
Where does it lead?
Where are your feet taking you?
Apr 13, 2010
Apr 13, 2010 at 6:09 PM UTC
It is the time of celebration
for the Good health of our guest!
They arrive at our village a week back,
Now they are roaming around
Over the sprawling wetland and grass land
With joy and shindig,
Their call makes everything melodic and wonderful!
Everyone is happy
They said that
“Visit of the guest indicates there
will be good weather in next summer” !
So they will celebrate for the good health of honey guest
in next full moon night
though God’s own way !
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 1:33 AM UTC
Eyeglasses old on wetland,
Footmarks deep in fissured sand,
Tidegreen takes all.
(c) LazharBouazzi
Jul 11, 2018
Jul 11, 2018 at 11:24 AM UTC
Trace my love in the half-shell curve of a woman’s back,
Like the naked wetland of Egypt, ibis-nest of the Nile delta.
Lovely woman, throw your arm back like a tethered cord,
To this sledge-mason for your pyramids, this falcon-doting ward
Of your gold capstones, all-seeing eyes over the west-bank shore.
Love, our days of polished limestone are wind-scoured,
Left like a pile of petrified fruit from figs and bottle gourds.
Love, always forget, now the sand has filtered into my pores
And cascades into the empty shell of my quarried heart.
Nov 23, 2019
Nov 23, 2019 at 9:02 PM UTC
11/15/2015
it has been a while since
i've been to the wetland coppice
teetering close to the neck of
a somerset sourland hummock
soft rushes and pickerel ****
wild lavender and marsh elder
a Canadian goose choking on a
birch branch
it died.
it has been a time since I've been there
timber rattler and weasel
playing in the grounsel
September,
like Wallace Stevens: lonely in
Jersey city.
November dead
cold bright annihilating days
i sometimes walk a mile
cutting across dead garden snakes
they sit in the living room, playing
the Nile is full of waste and bile
i wait alone by this little grove,
hoping that my fickleness of
Conversation topics
can help me now
but my mind, it raced
like a dead horse at a betting show
Sunday morning,
Saturday night really
I read Wallace Stevens in the field
And dream about jersey city
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 1:32 AM UTC
The wetland red
Cranberry fields
Ripe and glistening
Like the morning dew
That forms on wild thicket
In anticipation of harvest
Sep 21, 2020
Sep 21, 2020 at 7:43 PM UTC
Rhodora in winter, capsule like a claw,
remains of the 5-part flower Emerson saw,
gone to seed. Deciduous trees and shrubs
have their own winter beauty and a power
akin to the fittest's survival, self-same
that brought me, musing, here. Large globose buds!
(that dwarf the rose's but not the butternut's)
distinguish it from other Ericaceae that
surround this inland wetland. The Lord
all claim to worship is not better
than thou. I'm passing through naming you,
your parts, and the autumn elaeagnus who
is your neighbor. Good a walk as it gets
before edible understory herbs sprout.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:42 PM UTC
A sagging Gladius wallows inside me, limply,
It's rotting in its own wretched flaccidity,
I see others around me nurturing bounds of fruitful irises,
Some even mother sycamore, burgeoning with vigour, effortless as chaste kisses,
Tender fertilizer blots my chin in a bloodied marling,
I ingest the stolen soil, even when I feel the white sting of my innards' snarling,
So I'll inject myself with litres upon litres of putrid compost,
Only for my gladius to continuing shrivelling within my innermost,
It's stem-deep in nutrients, and is none the less decayed,
Atop the valley, even in the passing June, it stays, wilted withered and frayed,
Now, all I'm left with is the curdle of wetland moss festering in my blood,
Weighted with this fetidity, I let my gladius go, dead, in peace and clotted mud.
Dec 17, 2024
Dec 17, 2024 at 2:51 PM UTC
The desert air was
stealing water
from the children’s skin.
Their German Shepherd
sprinted along the rusting fence,
her paws flinging dust storms and
leaving a foot-deep moat in their path.
The children’s mother filled the bitch’s trench to its brim
with water from the plastic hose.
It almost melted in her hands--
its oily rubber stench
gave her a headache and she went to rest in the
air-conditioned kitchen, leaving
her ******** son in the care of the middle child,
the daughter from the same father.
Her ******* daughter sat waiting for her,
quivering in a wooden chair.
As her mother rested, her
tears pooled on the table, and she
stuttered to Mother about what their father
stole from her body.
Their mother’s blood became bile,
realizing the man she married
was a monster.
The mother stood up from her splintered chair
to gaze through the murky window
at the children she bore with the beast.
They skidded on their tummies across the only wetland
in the lowly desert town, giggling and
splashing their limbs in the filthy yard.
She wondered how she would tell her son
that they were moving far away, without daddy.
She frowned at the daughter of the *********
could she have at least
one stable child?
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 7:25 PM UTC
He told me of how she had
awakened him in the 4 a.m. mist.
Eyes bloodshot, the turquoise clouded with her cigarette smoke.
4 a.m. and already half a pack down.
Staring at their postcards from New Orleans,
how the ghosts of the Bayou Bienvenue rose from
the wetland, clammed at her arms.
The shriveled cypress trunks in the water,
Please come with us.
She held on to the broken hands,
in her fresh sunflower frock.
She always thought I’d like her
more in her death dress.
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 2:42 PM UTC