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Martha serpas' poem

Much of Martha Serpas' poetry revolves around the Gulf of Mexico and its assault on the Louisiana bayou.

By Times Staff Writer
Published November 7, 2006

A green heron pulls the sky behind it

like a zipper. Sharp rows

of clouds fold into themselves, erasing

the framed blue tide.

Barrier islands disappear into

the Gulf's gray mouth.

Everywhere something strives to overtake something else:

Grass over a mound of fill dirt, ants over grass,

the rough shading of rust between rows

of sheet metal frustrating the sky.

Boats breast up three deep in every slip,

and, as soon docked, are waved away.

The only music's crickets and lapping,

happy bullfrogs on slick logs.

A rustling skirt of palmettos

around the roots of a modest oak

that appear after hard rain. A fiddle,

or idling motor, moves away.

Go to sleep. God will come

in an extended cab for all of us:

the children, the dogs, the poets.

That old Adversary, the Gulf

our succoring Mother, having given

everything, will carry the whole of us away.

Reprinted from The Dirty Side of the Storm: Poems by Martha Serpas. Copyright (c) 2007 by Martha Serpas. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

[Last modified November 6, 2006, 21:16:29]