Who would walk this airless swamp?
Or bike this muggy path,
For if you slow down to a saunt,
The finger grass scratches and the flies attack.
Perhaps the Massachusett fleeing from Myles Standish' blade,
Like starving phantoms behind black swamp trunks,
Their children hushing in dense river grape.
Im well acquainted with Norman greed,
And want to escape it for the day,
But I see a ribbon latched onto something green,
Can't quite possibly swallow it, but won't let it get away.
I get back on my bike, like always try to forget,
And find the eastern Blue Hill passage,
As a speeding portage over the fly sipping rivulet.
They catch me all the same,
Can't pedal past the buzzing in my ear,
How the archival wetland drains,
The tree roots hit hard and knock the chain out of gear.
I walk my bike by the bridle down a narrow funnel,
The water is idle over planked footbridge,
Amongst the potent poison umbel.
I find an old rusted vehicle gate,
Leading to a long aborted highway road,
At midnight the path was saved,
As if this ghostly wetland could vote.
The hardtop was pierced by **** and scrub,
This isolated courtyard bordered by ravines ,
And tortured by the sun.
I walk the barren courtyard to the hills,
A misty bluish humid outskirt,
I walk the courtyard until,
I see a worker with a whitish shirt,
Then I dont know if I really saw it,
" You cannot enter here" –then got down on his hands–
With antlers–gallopped into the humid forest.
For some time I stayed there staring,
An arrowhead of flaked obsidian at my feet,
Amongst the scrub pierced hardtop of courtyard barren,
That pointed back to my path, barring east,
"To Fowls Meadow" I must have missed it on my left,
Under a locust tree,
That caused it to sparkle from its fine leaf net.
I ride down, to a massive tree overturned,
The roots and earth were in the sky,
In the massive hole something burned,
A knapped glass arrowhead, of yellow light.
It did not seem to be of yellow chert,
Strange!
Under five hundred years of dirt.
I had enough of this twisted place,
Verged in toxin, which I am immune,
I double time to pick up the pace,
Past hydric black mud of airless doom,
And the choking frogs one note song,
In eye thirsty thorns,
That you must unzip before moving on.
It opens up in a plain,
My bike startles many blackbirds up,
Their red streaked wings rise as flames,
Below the Meadow dust,
But there is something at my fore,
A doe's tail?
Swinging softly back and forth.
A girl! Amongst the Meadow way out here?
Walking non chalantly between
the riverine,
With music in her ears,
Is it real or do I dream?
Her shoulders must have been my mirage
Glistening in a cut white shirt,
In a beautiful decolletage.
I could not possibly pass her,
Without giving her a fright,
Due to her music I could not ask her,
So I dismounted my bike.
Half clad–elegantly so,
Clad in beautuful nature,
Like the buff-brown slender doe.
I walked my bike beside the reins,
All the Meadow was colored brass,
Lost in her french braids,
As the sun behind stained glass.
Gathered the courage, to look upon her face–
Scared that it would be concealed,
And like a seraphim fly away.
She smiles beautifully,
I tell her I love her, she can't hear a word I say,
Then I gallop down the dusty trail–
And disappear into the river grape.
