There is promise in the river. 

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In the mirrored language of sky and water. 

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We spoke it, once, long ago–when the Taino gave us language to pin storms to earth. To remember. To recognize.

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Listen. The marsh pops and cracks with oyster and shrimp. Heat climbs necks like mercury. 

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Witch hazel tonic, soaking the cotton through.

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A honey-dipped city. The saw palmetto. The tupelo.

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The red buckeye calling the hummingbird home.

 

Peek down my pelican throat and you’ll see canals stretching from Massachusetts to Key West. Salt rivers, salt marshes, salt lashes brushing dune-dusted cheeks. My fingers stretch inland, curve the coast. Swallow down the carbon, the methane, the incoming swells. Wood stork legs. Sea grape eyes. Needlerush teeth.

 

That shiver of spine.

 

The grass flickers. Steady the boat now, find the channel in, slowly slowly. 

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Brine me in pickleweed, a taste of iodine on the tongue. My spartina hair and ghost forest heart. Knock a beak against fallen oak and pine, the sweat bees shimmer green green green as hawks drop low. Open canopies of mesic flatwoods yawn more and more to sky.

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The salt will come. It is already here. Untuck the sparrow, the rail’s scratching laugh, a heron’s soft blue.

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Land once crept from the sea, like the hungry men who cut through scrub brush and needled pine to build concrete from shells.

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Now we carve the hearts from palms for salads. Land into preservation or use.

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In the distance, the mangroves walk north over bridges of blue sighs.