• The Grass, the glass-edged blades, the countless knives,
• the stuff of sand and crystal in its cells,
• drinking solar light and singing back
• the diamond glint, to water at its roots.
• The Grass, one single creature, in a dream
• alone with water, sunlight and the sky.
• Immortal, never older than a year,
• the blades will die, the seeds grow fat and fall,
• and the unnumbered leaves conspire to hide
• the River’s power, running to the Bay.
• Pa-hay-okee: grassy river, wide
• as Amazon, and shallow as a pond.
• In its universe, the galaxies
• of cypress, hardwood hammock, mangrove, pines,
• live their separate realities.

• The cypress spread their dripping, skirted roots,
• still as granite angels on a tomb,
• still as the gator, watching, onyx eyed.
• Over dangerous pools, the ghostly moss
• murmurs to the turtles, looking up
• from logs, with reaching necks, as if in prayer.
• Steps away the land is inches raised,
• and possessed again by grass and sky

• The hardwood hammock islands in the Grass
• float like mythic, misted Avalon.
• The orchid’s unexpected color lights
• the darker shadows of the moss and fern
• where the unconquered tribes made their last stand,
• rooted, like the great mahoganies.
• At the water’s edge, the Grass gives way
• where the River’s mouth is licking salt
• in the tangle of the mangrove roots.
• (Only birds have seen the knotted heart
• where no beast that walks on legs can go.

• The slash pine stands on naked bones of stone,
• a forest without shade, all lines and light.
• In the breaking day, the spider webs
• that run from trunk to trunk above the fans
• of jagged green palmetto leaves, are lit
• like burning letters written in the books
• of elves, spelling mystic messages.
• On the water in the grass, the sky reflects,
• and nothing else but clouds can comprehend
• the even reaching miles, the whispered voice
• of insects, and the sawgrass and the air
• repeating stories to the towered clouds
• that breathe the water in, and pile it up
• in miles-high thunderheads, and then exhale
• in summer’s furious and drowning rain.
• The breath and heartbeat of the ‘glades is rain.
• There are no springs, no rivers underground.
• This land is the planet’s newest born,
• still dripping from the womb of Mother Earth.
• Our ancestors were sitting at their fires,
• chewing on their bones and singing songs,
• when it found the shape it wears today.
• Nourished from the sky by sun and rain,
• It doesn’t have the fat of wells or soil.
• Tender as an infant, it is frail

II. The Walking Dredge

• The Stupendous Bay City Walking Dredge,
• built latitudes away, where rivers freeze,
• was a marvel of our brave, young century.
• Arms and levers, cable drums and gears,
• it stalked across the muck on six great feet.
• Set the corners, wind the cables, lift
• the center feet by inches, step ahead.
• Set the centers, scoop the blasted marl,
• build the road, extend the great canal
• foot by foot, two miles in a month.
• Before it, with machetes, men immersed
• in muck and bled by bugs slash the Grass,
• and the Grass cuts back, mixing blood
• with every inch and mile that’s sacrificed.
• Next the oxen bring the dynamite,
• in wagons pulled on shifting wooden rails,
• stumbling and bellowing, the beasts
• haul more than two and a half million sticks.
• At last, they break the rock below the mud,
• and the dredge devours the earth and builds.
• Behind it, on the newly cut roadbed,
• roll the kitchen wagons, tools, and bunks
• for the army of invasion, fighting through,
• victorious at last, Gulf Stream to Gulf.
• The Indians of the ‘glades learned to endure,
• and some tribes shared a common ritual
• for young men and women come of age.
• Splinters inserted in the skin were burned,
• creating scars to mark their fortitude.
• When the Tamiami trail was cut,
• the Everglades were scarred, forever changed.
• But a power that was hidden, now is seen
• by eyes that never scanned the trackless waste.
• Seen, it may be feared less, valued more,
• and valued, win its struggle to endure.

III.  Tesoro

• It was given to me by a friend
• as I was packing up for traveling.
• No longer than my thumb, an envelope
• labeled "MEXICO Tesoro," bright yellow.
• Shiny plastic, stitched around by hand,
• lined with cheap pink silk, full of saints.
• Tiny colored pictures, one medal,
• a fragment of a text, cut from a Book.
• "It’ll keep you safe," he said. It did.
• It also led me into miracles.
• Plain ones, like the hazards of the road
• escaped, and lousy weather missed.
• But really good ones too, like flights of birds,
• the spoonbills’ sunset wings against the sun.
• Like the way a crow inspected me,
• improving me by looking upside down.
• Like really nice folks met along the road.
• Most of all, it was the Everglades.
• A tiny envelope of what it was,
• endangered and beset, but wonderful.
• On domesticated trails and walks,
• the tourists, with their cameras, point and look.
• "Oh my God, an alligator, Fred!
• Take my picture! Oh! Don’t get too close!"
• But they were here, and so was I, How else?
• On a boardwalk, looking at the Grass,
• I think, "However could you pass through this?"
• But it has lifted me, and freed my mind
• from the swamps that daily sucked me in.
• I woke up with the dawn and watched the birds.
• I built a fire at night and watched the coals.
• I drove the road, but stopped along the way
• just to look, and listen, and to breathe.
• A tiny envelope of miracles,
• but wide as I can see, and full of worlds
• all different, and all a single web.
• A little pocket amulet for God.
• In the morning, as I leave, I’ll stop
• and open my tesoro’s tiny clasp,
• and tuck inside a little piece of Grass.
• Sheri L. Lohr
• 1/30/00

Everglades Poems

 Everglades ballad  In the Pines  Homo Pyrotechnicus  Watching the Shuttle  

The Purple Gallinule  Piney Woods  Sugar  Mosquitoes  Nothing Out There