Wetland Song

The April morning's quiet and so is the November. Wherever people outnumber trees or the dominant cover type is unquiet. Nothing wrong with that. Walt got it right, and Jane Jacobs: the city is an experienced, used beauty. Her toes are long, nails thick and hair thin. Yet her kisses can be sweet; or smell of ****. All my life I've tried to point my window toward some narrow wedge of nature. On Seaman Ave., over the roof beyond the chimneys to the park where every dog was walked. Could I survive soot and an air shaft now, pigeons and cats, or even a desk in the legislature for my lot in life. How about prison like Etheridge Knight, Nazim Hikmet? I've gotten soft. When he builds that house in the pocket wetland my window now looks out on, the developer will have given me what I need. Amphibian mortality, gravel, fill, oak, ash and maples felled. Good to the last drop is our bitterness, our love.