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Gulf Coast Writers Association's Featured Writer
North-Central Florida
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From: Sometimes We Drift
Flow
Where do the fish go when we sleep?
Beneath the fresh and brackish waters do they keep?
In the estuaries of St. Louis Bay
alligators come and lay in wait for prey.
In the shallow bayous, they stay.
The White Egrets and Blue Herons do not fear the gators
it seems, as they pass, preoccupied
betaking themselves to their nests for feedings.
The slippery bream do not stop to press their luck
and the mussels do not appear to believe they will come unstuck
from the weathered poles of old piers in which they are
embedded.
I sit, bobbing in my kayak, in the back bay chop
as a seabird invites itself to stop and ride my bow.
I can almost touch the clouds now.
I lean back and balance my paddle on my sunburned thighs
as the wind picks up.
And I close my eyes.
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From: Sometimes We Drift
Beyond the Headlines
I could not escape
the peculiar stench
of the garbage
and still-full refrigerators
and molded furniture
and waterlogged sheetrock
coming through
the A/C vent
as I passed
the post Katrina
debris fields
A heavy gull
labored and flapped
against the rain cloud sky
making its snow white wings
flash against the dark
background
like a flying Morris Code
signaling to save us
from our private
Armageddon |
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Stray Dog
A Spanish looking man with a puff-eyed face and tanned rough hands inside black jean pockets walked sideways toward me. I sipped a bottle of spring water and stared deliberately, yet indifferently at him, freezing his intrusive gaze. He looked up at me, looked away, then down; then, looked up at me again, and sat down with his back to me. What was he worrying about, or what was he hiding from? What was he ashamed to admit, or unwilling to give up about himself? He reminded me of a stray dog: attentive, but distrusting, unwilling to express and skeptical about the world through which he hurriedly wandered,
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fighting for every unpredictable outcome of each uncertain day. My tired eyes drooped as I nodded into my book. I yawned, and extended my legs, then locked my hands, split-fingered, while stretching my arms out in front of me, and measured the halfway point of my layover by the airport wall clock. The Spanish looking man propped a quilted jacket against the seat back, preparing, I supposed, to steal a moment’s peace, a crumb of comfort. I watched him as his head ratcheted downward in slow motion, nearer and nearer his waiting shoulder, as if it allowed him to rest from the wolves of torment; keeping them at bay to gain some strength before another challenge, soon. |
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Past Features |
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by Paul E LaViolette |
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by Kristen Twedt |
by Dixon Hearne |
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Pelham’s Saturday Morning Frolics by R. F. Marazas |
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by Celine Rose Mariotti |
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by Fred Prince |
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Archeologist at Ruins in Labrador by John Freeman |
by Geneva Jo Anthony |
by Thomas Lynn |
The Seven Laws
of the Universe
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