"wetlands" poems
The first in over sixty years
The whooping cranes are living wild
Now one young pair has laid an egg
And, too, with luck, will raise their child
They near Kissimmee were released
Beating the odds, survived to breed
A ray of hope they might increase
And ***** the armor of human greed
But cranes need water as do we
As still we pump the wetlands dry
Our chains of lakes sprout fat resorts
The river of grass condemned to die
Yet dare we dream we might reverse
This harsh inflicted damage done
Still apathy is our nation's curse
Which battles none has ever won
Today I cheer the whooping cranes
Who still have hope that they might see
Upon some far and distant day
Their offspring's offspring flying free
Oct 23, 2015
Oct 23, 2015 at 6:00 AM UTC
Anthropogenic climate change
Nuclear fallout Chernobyl
Raptors flourish
And wolves
Dwell
Sleeping.
Catfish swimming
In a cooling eye
Grown old and untouchable
By mans wills.
Rusty ships
Wetlands
Roam free.
Storks in their nests
1875
The cheval de prjevalski
Dye without mercy
The fallout from time
A call to restore
A broken land.
The wolves cry
The wolves cry
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
loosely based on events that never took off
I refuse to let it die out, I can save some
of the memories, wash away the dirt on my name
play with the energies as if you were here all the same
as if I can hear you calling out my name, or whispering
my heart is whimpering looking for hot hands
to cradle my cranium and explore my wetlands
you were just my type of man, my perfect poison
I was just your type of victim, the perfect person
for you to disrespect, neglect, and gaslight
for you to pretend we were friends until that night
where you stripped me of more than my rainbow light
Mar 3, 2022
Mar 3, 2022 at 10:48 AM UTC
Rainy day people and frogs
Packed New York streets, mossy bogs
Umbrella or bumbershoot
In quagmire and crowded route
Splashing masses, polliwogs
Precipitation, cascade
The alley or everglade
Plebeians and ***** toads
Wetlands, winding back roads
Holding brolly or sunshade
Mobs, croaker in the wallow
Soggy marsh, bypass below
A sprinkle, pitter-patter
Parasol, doesn't matter
Your bullfrog and average Joe
Sep 30, 2013
Sep 30, 2013 at 3:30 AM UTC
Soma that seeps
flowing
like little creeks
sprinkling
off the edge
wetting
a tongue outstretched
watering
wilted flower beds
feeding
that pretty head
cycling
arid to wetlands
May 29, 2019
May 29, 2019 at 11:54 AM UTC
Spring peepers peep in newly warmed wetlands, bullfrogs nerver peep.
Apr 5, 2013
Apr 5, 2013 at 9:38 PM UTC
The topography of your body...
Is the landscape
I call home.
Scaling your heights
plumbing your depths...
your wetlands
and peaks.
If I were blind
I could find my way
by tracing your form
with my greedy hands.
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 8:06 PM UTC
California gold-rush blues
Got you pretty thirsty
Where's tank girl when you need her
Saliva thick
Lump in throat
Tongue swelling
Neck swollen
Can't breathe
Drowning
Shrinking skin
Hallucinations
Eyelids crack
Tears of blood
Leather-purse face
Amputated lips
Nose withered
Eyes trapped
We're all exported and exploited
Sold sanely cheap
Used how the rich see fit
Dead in one week
Ecosystem crashing
All for their mansions
Filled with rooms they never use
Profit ******
We see oceans through our windows
97 percent
97 percent
3 percent for you and none for us
Little boy is drinking bubbles
But it ain't champagne
It's dead dogs and fetus juice
Dog dogs and abuse
Where are the wetlands
Where are the holy springs
Soon we'll all be Atlantis
Just another lost city
Soon we'll be living
In underground caves
Like cowards
We all want roses in our garden bower
But the best heroes
Might as well be slaves
Global desert
Without rain
Green turns yellow
Here come the earthquakes
****** forest
Rest in peace
They erected cities
In your memory
Cartels and shades of grey
Vivendi, Veolia
Machines with no soul
Privatizing blue gold
In their corporate quads
Woe to WTO
The new colonialism
Coca Cola 7-Up
Sorry but your time is up
Destroy everything you touch
When it's gone
Get up and leave
Destroy another planet
**** and conquer
SLAPPing silly pointless fools
Transporting silly tools
Shooting all the people's people
Got to pull up the roots
Bullets through lace curtains
Has a ring to it
You spineless cruel leaders
With your oil rivers
Well you've made a rival now
World map's changing underground
Alternatives are scarce
Purity is all but lost
Path of least resistance blocked
Metamorphosizing clocks
Circulation down the train
Don't drink the red water
Just pray for rain
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 2:20 AM UTC
....
Stream takes possession of the land
Made wetlands
There are plenty of fish
Meet your protein needs
Clouds are playing in the sky
The dark and the shadows are dissolved in water
You drink
To quench thirst
Yet you have an existence
With a Continuous form
He who cast the shadow on the ground
Where love and hope locked in a home
Binds within a loop with Only a God
Words which are uttered
Of course diluted within air
Has written in the book of divine
Many do not understand while they read
See a beautiful garden
They are more steadfast
And that Red Rose is for yours
I have seen a lot of values to be gloomy
Then they lost
I have seen so far
Wandering Star to Star
Again in the Fog, tried to recognize
She lost!
Ah! How come all!
Alas! How Everything lost in the time
From Empty
Or Nothing
As if an Existence of Non-Existence!
When Silence come down
Dark touches the death role
Nothing Exist without the Spiritual Soul
From Lost to Found
Everything Answering Nothing!
But where is the balance
You will get back everything
One day!
......
Aug 2, 2016
Aug 2, 2016 at 6:13 PM UTC
Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat
of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching
the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water
and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold
heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame
Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's
ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed
a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves
and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,
as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills
and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins
and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears
rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.
Sep 15, 2021
Sep 15, 2021 at 4:29 PM UTC
By Joseph Childress
Sometimes, brainstorms
Are calming enough
The flower expected
Doesn't even have to blossom
The muddy water
Is a composition itself
Deep music waves
With Earth to keep you grounded
These wetlands
Can be depressing
Your impression
Becomes obvious
In the form of footprints
Imprints from bare feet
Rare feats are expected
But walking
When the rain storms
Is sometimes, calming enough
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 9:36 PM UTC
I put my hands
Up through the sands
Of the hourglass.
Please pass
The hammer and nail.
My burned heart strings, pale
In comparison to live
Bees in a hive
Never feeling
The sands, nor peeling
Wetlands off brain surfaces.
No, I'll take my heart strings
Put them with all the other things.
Then, I raise my hammer to the glass.
I spill out onto the shining brass.
Cold and blinded I cry,
"This out here is all a lie."
May 4, 2013
May 4, 2013 at 10:34 PM UTC
Ode to the Last Vast Wetlands
We teach our children to love Jesus
and to believe in Santa Claus
Just to mess with all their little heads
And easter bunnies bearing chocolate eggs
on the day he died and then was resurrected
We teach our children that the sun rises
When in fact it's just the earth that is turning
and when it sets, it really doesn't
But, we don't let on that sunsets aren't real
There are no Appaloosas up in Whitehorse
Just what is left of precious metal - gold
and all the souls of dead bear that I murdered
to keep a rich girl warm when it gets cold
We teach our parents that they will be rewarded
Someday, if they a-leave-a us alone
But, there always has to be that one girl
who thinks she's rich enough for baby's bone
So there you have it - something is in learning
That some of us will never figure out
Because it takes a brain to stop some God from killing
And an oil well can only provide drought
Jul 1, 2015
Jul 1, 2015 at 4:52 PM UTC
Pleading for a purchased god
Romanticized for its ancien régime
Celiac, and yet I licked the wheat paste
Of the letter I was was trimmed A4
In all that time spent by the basin
(and its traffic-trimming wetlands)
I only rode my bike to the depot
To color code my calendar
When capital kept its calls collect,
When the gravy train kept me idle
Each chamber would be emptied
Fruitlessly: punch drunk with praise
(Indulge a little)
Each from four through five: orchestrated
The plains always claim the sixth
(Respecting the tradition of western folk)
Only three will ever threaten treatment
Sep 25, 2022
Sep 25, 2022 at 9:57 PM UTC
Five years ago today you departed this earth
5 years, 5 months, 5 minutes, 5 seconds, they all conjoined instantaneously, so conveniently
I don't recall the day of the week , the time of the day
Although I memorized the confines of your face, your rugged unwavering hands
Your guttural voice often immigrates within my head
When I soul search, I look for you
The fading air that I begged you could take
Fretfulness settled into the restristed room, submerging into wetlands
Incomprehensible grief as we bathed in tears
Prayers were addressed to our ears
Gentle brushes against your skin just to feel your warmth
I thought what is the sound of a heartache?
Because I knew at that moment even sorrow knew grief
Having no words for my own mother who lost a son
Knowing that there were three brothers and now one is gone
Recognizing how delicate brothers can be, yet unbreakable
I envision you discovering fistfuls of copper
A sacred river that delivers peace and there's berries to pick
With sawdust on your fingertips and a smile upon your face
The fish are always biting, and you can always hunt deer
Rings of kaleidoscope colors paint the sky, calmly on the shore
Jun 10, 2016
Jun 10, 2016 at 1:22 AM UTC
▪♢▪
I hover above as
you write and ponder.
Visit your buffaloes
and assorted natural wonders.
Array of rocks 'n shells
Feathers, Eagle, Hawk.
Turkey and Peacock.
Your collection of critters,
they all welcome me.
Savion is busy and so, not
bothered in the least by my presence,
though it would be such a lovely
moment to meet her...
My memories gleefully
take a hitch on the back of yours.
I playfully wonder if I shall be noticed..
as you are yet unaware of my decision,
upon invitation, to join you.
I love to travel...any way I can.
Today, this is the trip for me!
Memory at will. To visit with a
color, a scent, a touch, a hurt, a joy.
To explore a
memory yet unopened.
Woodlands, Wetlands and Deserts
Descending deep into the
Canyons, down to the river.
While here, venture the rapids.
Then, on to the Dead Sea and the Rose
colored Himalayan Salt Caves.
Dolphins to visit and sing
in chorus, beneath the ocean waters.
Oh, how I have missed them.
As is the luxury of Memory travel,
We are weightless and soundless.
Have no odor, can swim and fly.
We are able at will, to tap into
Ancient Knowledge. The memories
that have come before us,
our gift as a shared consciousness.
We visit our happiest of times.
A delight to have and to hold.
Often, we become immersed in the
our most troubled experiances.
Reliving them over and over.
We are able to reroute a memory
at will,for our pleasure or to
indulge in pain, or a blame.
Our minds are a rich labyrinth of
hopes, dreams and remembrances.
Join in the fun. You can at will.
Thanks for taking this
little trip with me.
▪♢▪
Posting of 'Memory' by W L Winter.
It is posted below "Hitchin' a Ride"
Or find with link
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1310736/memory/
Or just take a visit on over to
W.L.Winter's site
and luxuriate in the
Bountiful Beauty of his Poetry.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 1:39 PM UTC
Beep!
Green eyes shimmering across the lake
spark fires in the marshmallow girls.
"Can you put extra cream in this?"
Beep!
Peppermint air so warm,
but the snow can't melt away.
"He seems colder today."
Beep!
The wetlands are drying,
exposing more clay each day.
"We lost him."
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 9:23 PM UTC
The rain finally comes
The spring rises up to greet the sun
On the long river highway,
The road is long
Past the brook
Past the stream
Along the river
Beyond the lake
Past the lagoon
The wetlands too
The highway a ribbon unfolds
Out to the ocean the road goes
With the promise of deepest
Sleep.
Dec 28, 2018
Dec 28, 2018 at 9:17 AM UTC
If, in the golden Bengal,
At the crack of dawn,
The rainbow from beyond the skies
Gently alights upon the wings of a butterfly,
Smiling all the while
Then what shall befall
As the day softly wanes,
In the twilight beneath the veiling horizon,
When evening tenderly embraces the earth?
Wandering all day through the villages of Bengal,
Across the vast wetlands, fields of rice,
From door to door, along the wild paths,
Through shaded groves and verdant forests
Amidst the gaps of flaming Krishnachura trees,
On that very path,
The midday red fairy peeks through with a playful glance.
The dark Mathura clouds paint the sky,
As the graceful Giriya ducks spread their wings,
The vermilion-touched woodpeckers tap away
While the sunbirds sing their melodies,
By the edge of the waterlily lake, beneath the banyan tree,
A contented farmer's flute releases the joy within every heart.
And none other than the blue fairy
Leaps out of the monsoon pond,
Only to descend into the courtyard
Woven by Bangla Mother's enchanting, tender touch.
So too shall the golden sun descend at twilight,
With a gentle smile amidst the evening's enchantment.
At the close of day, it will offer to the moon in pure bliss
Its crimson garland of red water lilies!
Aug 22, 2024
Aug 22, 2024 at 12:10 AM UTC
We dance in the wetlands:
Hopping tree to tree in galoshes,
In snake boots.
We can hear the rattlers and
Crying crocodiles over the
Buzz buzz buzzing of our chainsaws,
But the bossman says stay down.
So we wait and watch, and when
A snake snaps to bite, we touch it
Just so: on the back of the head
With our buzzing tools. Then
We go right back to dancing
Tree to tree and rock to rock.
Step in the water and scaly babies
Will cry out for mother,
But bossman will say to stay
And shoot the mama if she snaps to bite.
We drive them from their homes,
Scaly devils, with our buzz buzzing saws
And our snake boots. We clear the land.
Where they shall go, we shall follow,
Always there is more to clear
More to cut and haul away
But we must be prepared for
Attack, always awake,
Always ready to shoot and touch
The back of their heads, just so,
With our insistent buzzing saws.
Sep 5, 2010
Sep 5, 2010 at 3:21 PM UTC
I must have something to joke about. Like being a swampy mermaid. I'd **** to be a sexless myth, hermit in the wetlands, combing my hair with the delicate ribcage of a racoon. Still, every now and then the boyfriend/bear would come find me and **** off onto my tail. What wild certainty in that -
Sep 30, 2015
Sep 30, 2015 at 3:44 PM UTC
It takes some courage to eat a legume's fruit
knowing what is known of each poisonous part
of the locust (although the flowers may be frittered).
What's pushing up through the leaf litter
before the canopy is out, past the stone fence?
Wild lily-of-the-valley is my guess.
Of 140,000 soldiers, less than 1% have considered
the fruit of the desert surprisingly good and varied.
They have stayed and married women who are crows
and will, circumstances dictating, fight for you.
We have waited and waited for this election
and now we're divided into just two factions.
If everyone votes and every vote's counted there will be
nothing for either faction to crow about. All will be
well with the republic and in the world what will be will be.
What responsibility does a citizen bear
for participating in a war, blowing the roofs
off houses, exposing the beds and clean-swept floors?
Warriors at the gate, you will not run,
you will not bargain. Dig in deep, feet
overhanging the abyss, protect your children.
I poured water into the dry vase of garden cultivars -
snapdragon, phlox, bigonia, bluebell, mint -
and have they not rewarded me with their collective scent?
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:37 AM UTC
I'll be like the wetlands
I'll take the brunt
When the storm rolls in
Let the flood wash
across
my skin
I know how to survive being drowned
So I'll stand my ground
Oct 9, 2020
Oct 9, 2020 at 11:42 PM UTC