Spatterdocks

Bathed in yellow tannins,

a bale of watchful terrapins

fell like dominos.

From the river's mouth

a legless plug of prowess

clogged a crowded throat.

Some boorish captain,

unfit to helm,

smoked the river's glass ablaze.

Everything with wings

flocked the mossed colonnades —

red-winged, inflamed.

We with arms and oars

bore the brunt of another wake,

blood curdled,

made to cradle his throttle.

I wonder—

did he mistake open mouths for awe?

Our jaws agape

not for flex but oafish curl.

Or did we wake from highway hypnosis?

Capsized by mistake,

forced to swallow the endemic ripple

that has no middle.

To reckon we're all just passing through

a river already burning.

Moor the motor.

Churning.

See our river reflecting

all that ever meant anything—

the spatterdocks lying flat

as we rise and fall,

bent among the cypress knees,

bobbing for breath,

beating hearts among the biting fish,

wiggling from the same wicked hook,

hung from the same dead line.

The spatterdocks still lying flat

while we ripple with mouths open

that we should gape at nature's awe.

I'm not sure if we meant to burn this river…

but here we are

in a river burning.

*Cover photo by Kseniya Kopna from Pexels

**This poem was inspired by an unplanned drift into a flotilla on the Saint Johns River.