Epithalamium

Today I'm happy by myself
wandering this creek's paths of sand and crushed shells,
what used to be submerged.

Mosquitos drain me good.

Before this river was redirected, it joined two others
and flowed into the Gulf.

What we cannot change, we evade
and call new. We delay. I could
call the irrigation works at the headwater bog
an aubade
against flooding.

There are picnic spots nearby, gazebos and grills
emerging from palmettos and bindweed.
A storm blew down the oak I'd climb to watch
fireworks for free.

Men still cruise out here.

In this lush expanse a man
was lynched
at the beginning of the century
I was born in.

Moving off the trail, I wade into the river.
Time feels suspended.
My bare feet
shuffle pebbles like some grubbing shore bird.

Screeching insects, thickets of sweet bay and titi,
moldering scent—

All this will be gone someday.
Gone that paths and signs, gone the milkweed, gone
the armadillos and the field
and the lynching tree when this river rejoins the others
and washes this away—
no, not gone
but come together, history, nature, love, and loss
brought to scale in a glorious
algal bloom, a brightness of jade and amber,
all this water moving toward where it's always belonged,
where I cannot be, where I am.

 

--Derrick Austin