14.

Haze. 
A white haze.
Port Talbot milky. 
Devon coast non-existent.  
Lighthouse at Mumbles Head outlined against the milk of nothing. 

                     A white poem. 
                  World swallower. 
                               Vague brown sheen of pollution above the white 
          particulates of the mind, scattered, 
                                                               refracting the milk-sun.  

                  And the Gulf. . .still gushing oil,
                      thousands of miles from here: so many inlets and marshes that are
                                                                       not quite water, not quite land,
                                  permeable. Where a water moccasin 
spun around dead fish 
                         hung on a rope dangling in black water, spun around my bare feet. 
						                                      Back of my brain, a cool fire, 	
        	    like the snake’s eye, steady. Body easy as water;
					                       muscle of water, cartilage of water;
 
   snake and water slipping into and out of each other;

                      and I was born — right then, right there — blinking newborn, 
	
					                                     wet-souled, water-limbed

                   (Is there oil there now? Mouth of the Suwannee River? A slopping,
	                       strangling diarrhea pouring from the ass of Things?) 

Christien Gholson  | Tidal Flats 15
Contents | Mudlark No. 63 (2017)