Sloshed Poem by Jerry Buckley

Soggy - soaking - saturate,
this Mississippi River delta bog.
Yesterday's sun-bathing farm fields
become tomorrow's torpid aquifers.
Impromptu lakes invade outward and
upward - irreverent toward civilization;
contemptuous of carpentry and carpets -
of this ribbon of asphalt over which we travel.

Strips of higher grounds appear as islands;
patches of drooping cotton and beans and milo.
Gnarled bare-limbed scrub oaks - pipe cleaners
contorted into so many wee Zacchaeus perches.
Little green houses - rectangular - two windows,
one door - smoke curling upward and eastward;
remnants of pinking-sheer cut felt fabric,
Elmer-glued onto grocery-sack covered box tops.

Post-harvest cotton stalks shiver inside
cheap over-sized dollar store galoshes;
Community minded pecan trees reluctantly
devolve into sullen existential giants.
Roundup flavored Kool-Aid strangles every root.
Even the stalwart hawks - red-tailed and sparrow -
have abandoned their posts for Folgers and fudge.
Only crayfish and turtles and ducks find any solace;
everything else is huddled back into itself. Sloshed.

But tomorrow will bring a fast-food frenzy
for migratory snow geese, dropping in to fuel up
on earthworms driven to the surface of the mire;
a rest stop somewhere near Turrell and I55.

'Voice of One' @ Jerry Buckley