Gargoyle Knees
Spanish moss clutches the neck
In a ghost-filled Cypress-kneed
old-world swamp.
No settler ever farmed these pools,
nor made Cypress-houses with
Cottonmouths clinging to
neighboring branches.
The black pools lurking
with mosquito larvae
and a healthy fear of the unknown
drove them away.
The gargoyles sit quietly beneath the shallow waters,
more effective guardians here
than in the cathedrals of France.
Hey
Monster rolling in the quiet night,
Over the roadside junk car lots, wooden churches,
Pushing at leaning old paint-forgotten farm buildings
Sweeping up the long grasses into round
fat bunches
that sit quietly
as though they would follow you away during the night
if only they could find their feet.
Instead, they feel the cars go by
with gentle envy.
Virginia,
Your fields stretch out in
threaded furrows around us
I feel your earth � fingers that reach
up into the hardwood trees,
Leaves, still like the sky.
Your farmers eat corn
and chew tobacco leaves.
My grandchildren (when they find you) will
walk your fields collecting red mud on their shoes
and I will have to say to them, stop and wipe your feet,
don�t track that red mud in here.
Their leaves, as mine, will turn red-lion and straw-colored,
crumble into earth.
