An Ode to A Marsh, and an Update.
Featuring another poem from the archives, never before published but recently edited. Inspired to share by my recent travels to the marshy coast of Georgia.
Excuse the long absence! I planned on taking a weeklong vacation, both IRL and also on Substack, but the vacation on Substack accidentally lasted longer. Blame it on a long series of drives traversing the Eastern seaboard, a hurricane, and a German Shorthaired Pointer. Still, I’ve been working on a couple essays that don’t yet feel ready, so I’m holding on to them for a little longer, to edit. You will have essays featuring Lauren Oyler and Arundhati Roy to look forward to!
I recently spent the most nourishing weekend with childhood friends in West Virginia, followed by time with family along the coast of Georgia, on St. Simons Island. It’s where I got married. I go back often. A particular nature that just gets to me deep. The beaches are mostly undeveloped and thick with dunes, the trees are flung with Spanish Moss, there are lizards everywhere (a hazard, really, with a GSP) and a sea that filters into expansive swaths of marshland.
Years ago, I sat next to one marsh and wrote the beginnings of a poem, which has naturally died and been reborn through many iterations (as all my poems do). I find hoarding writing too long turns this arduous process moot; writing is most viable when it is in exchange with another.
So in that spirit, here’s (another) poem I’ve kept hidden in my archives, about one of my favorite places on earth.
Ode to A Marsh What yawning ground grows by sea like this? What tide laps in a such gentle sway? What ease, so gently pronounced? At the edge of one marsh, soft along a southern shore, I meet peace, abound. I lie here without want, this is no true state of nature. Soon, I will ache to move, our most cumbersome nature. I shall not relinquish guard. Stillness like this veils destruction; it's true that dampened earth has an ability to shift like quicksand, and heavy water akin to swamp can overtake, a thief by flood. Yet a defiant grass dwells here in color, breaking surface like tender hopes of regeneration. I linger long enough to behold their insistence: sea arrives to inundate by force— rapacious, unyielding! Only to relent, so sudden and swift, as if to change heart, as if to allow ground to air, to leave earth wide open, free. I watch them lull. Thin green and feather light, sturdy as cord, serious though gentle— surviving a delicate equilibrium between tickling the surface and drowning beneath it. The moon and the clouds play God to this land. Likewise, God played his cards to this South: beauty marred in acrid sin, heavy rains dried out by ardent sun. Under the surface of this marsh, I imagine life in the millions being birthed: spiny and spineless creature, small as amoeba, big as a fist or a crab, a handful of sea salt to taste. All eager to feed the surrounds— like this stilted blue heron elegantly grazing her fill. Moved by ocean swell and breathing organism, mantras of cicada’s hum, songs of breeze through salted grass, time nudged by gravity, an unrelenting ceaseless tow. When the tide rises again, we are wise to remember: the inundated shall always air. And to hold in memory: this sudden peace, this earth wide open, free.