Silver flashes of leaping mullet
mark the dark water trail for our crafts:
slender blue ellipses slipping
among the secret shades of mangrove inlets.
We duck under branches, watch for wasps
as horseshoe crabs dart beneath us.
Spaniards mistook them for giant bugs
and gave this place an awful name,
but in the cool at the shore of brackish
channels where herons and egrets hunt,
there is peace of a land without pests,
and our troubles submerge like manatees:
Thick and gray financial woes,
slow and cumbersome home repairs,
sinking headlines of terror and war,
lumbering, lingering parental concerns,
these matters take a trudging dive
before seeking some patch of vibrant green
away from our sterns that wrinkle
this serene surface with easy progress
tracked by broken-log buoys, deeper breaths –
restful exercise on an unchurched Sunday,
a natural Sabbath lightening our hulls
pointed homeward by sunset’s compass.
John Davis Jr. is the author of The Places That Hold (Eastover Press, 2021), Middle Class American Proverb (Negative Capability Press, 2014), and three other books of poetry. His work has been published in Nashville Review, The Common, Salvation South, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere over the last 25 years. He holds an MFA and teaches English and Creative Writing in Florida’s Tampa Bay region. FB INSTA
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