Tonawanda Swamps

As it would for a prow, the basin parts with your foot. Never a marsh, of heron blue but the single red feather from the wing of some black bird, somewhere a planked path winds above water, the line of sky above this aching space. Movement against the surface is the page that accepts no ink. A line running even over the alternating depths, organisms, algae, a rotting leaf. Walk naked before me carrying a sheaf of sticks. It’s the most honest thing a man can do. As water would to accept you, I part a mouth, a marsh, or margin is of containment, the inside circuitous edge. No line to follow out to ocean, no river against an envelope of trembling white ships. Here I am landlock. Give me your hand.