In honor of Earth Day, we’re sharing these poems written by our Scholar Frederick Foote, MD. We hope they offer some peaceful reflection.
Wild Serene
In paths of red
I licked the water’s
cool pink mouth.
The sweet green muck enfolds
my dots of light
a heart ablaze with heat
with no trace of salinity
to mar its percolating suck
its warmth and slide.
Fishes brushed
my plated underbelly
Ecstacy
to turn and snap
quick as thinking
fast as (dillaprine).
Crocodiles
steered their bulk beneath the algae
parting the eager tide
and with due caution
I paddled, paddled,
my limbs happy
under their (fracks) and (bighs).
Reaching the shallows
I found a pool of flowers
close against a bank
that rose and steamed.
Lines of passing fishes dapple
light that falls, the stream.
The King of the Reeds
Blue stream
dripping patch of leaves
fade and make
him swell with noise.
tonight he’ll seize
twelve flies on the wing
clammy ears await
his urgent singing.
Joy explodes
a world that’s pure
and paradise-wet
intends no harm
and will not let him know:
beneath the levee’s lip
a snake lives nine summers old
who’ll snare the tip of his nose
before he gets
a chance to dive
and swallow him down alive.
Broken Grass
The buzz of flies
on my trachomatous eyes
and whining cubs with batting paws
make me wake and yawn
and stand to stretch
on shocking feet
*
Always the young taste best.
This day’s design
means death to one of theirs
and life to mine.
*
a tangled loop of bowel
a dusty hoof
torn from the fury around the feast.
My cubs lie down to sleep
their sweet hot limbs
uncoiled and slack.
Full Circle
What did
your dying mean
to you who lived it
Was there a moment
great snake
that gave you freedom
crystallized
like black birds on an infrared sight
framed with indecision
Or did you simply move
like children touching a power line
as we recoil from pain
did you rise to strike
just as the hoe
curved like an iron rainbow
down to slice your neck
cutting the tender fibers in two
making your eyes squeeze shut
Ruptured head
falling back away from the rock
white gums chewing black dirt
snake
what mechanistic bubble
makes us open our lips at last
as if to try to breathe
mother of demons
will I writhe like you
at my own death
my own hypoxia, my hydrogen ion
all the magic signs
to which you’ve led the way
and which I’ll never know
except through you
your rage unable to see
the prime menorrhagia’s
only just begun
You drag your tooth
of bone across my boot
a touch light as an anvil
levitate
to string limp coils around my neck
the haunted cook with the red face
whose burning stew ferments the night
by always underwriting
one more question
© Frederick Foote, MD
