In Backwoods Marblehead

At my fresh tracks in fudge mud
The moss rolls out its carpet;
I’m visiting royalty before the ferns,
A tree has been felled for my occasion,
A turtle stretches out his head when he sees me looking,
Shining his brass, military green with yellow underbelly,
On a branch rising like a flag from the pond’s fabric.

The bird beaks like a wave make a sudden squeaking
Above a fox that cavorts the plank, curious and yellow,
Wondering if all this fuss is on him.

I sit upon a green and grey rock
Like a beached whale – it welcomes me
And tells of the peace each day it sees
In its own exile, ravined by ants,
Buffed by floating leaves, making its own
Still point in the loud and posturing forest,

Where the birches hang like snakes from the sky
Silver in the sun’s particles, where
The rough and mirrored surface of the water
Breathes with semaphore bubbles,
The circles and arrows of bugs at play
Skip across the plane as quickly as it takes
A bullfrog to pull away or a crow to cross.

Debris is sprinkled like green cheese, with smooth openings
Like drips of ink, where a leaning willow branch drinks.
A blue heron hovers where sunlight quivers,
On the festooned floor that seems to croak with its own voice
As the mallard with her young, neck corkscrewed, is one
With the waterlily flowers rising and white.

After two weeks of rain, the swamp extends deep into the woods.
How easily it holds the impenetrable forest,
With its moss islands in oak root,
Each mound a strand in miniature, of cedar,
And its skunk cabbage, wide and flapping on black water,
And the free grass on lazy stalks, the rushes, blackberry flowers,
The thorns and vines and bright red berries
For tanagers and jays, cardinals and grosbeaks
To contemplate the seen and the unseen.

I almost feel at home, a vision in the black sheen of pond
When I see, hiding, another figure, alien and staring,
A giant coot, on the other side.