Lamar Howell's Weblog

There’s a tiny hidden swamp near my house

which runners ipodly miss by just a few feet,

not knowing about the egrets home base,

not seeing the dead trees standing like sentinels

I wait at night to hear the croaking

the deep gutteral sounds of lumpy-skinned grandfroggers.

This is our pad, each seems to say,

with the volume tinnitusly turned up.

Beavers, with flat-tailed nonchalance,

slap the placid murky water

and drag themselves ashore to gnaw

and think about the trees their ancestors felled

The stumps, their alma mater, like huge pencils

jammed upside down in the mud,

pointing chiseledly three feet off the ground.

Bicyclists are ituned-out

and never see, hear, or breathe in the swamp.

As unofficial guardian of this slushy real estate,

I selfishly hope they never discover it.