The sun dips beneath a horizon of barrier islands, marshes filled with traces of the winged and wild-footed. Skimmers in spring, migrants wheeling toward the salt of other seasons. On one side, the water; on the other, the land—acres that yielded corn, tobacco, barley, cotton. And where are the quail that loved fields of castor bean, that thrashed in the wake of rifle fire? This time of year, everything in the landscape tints to the color of bronze and rust, registry pages inked in sepia with names and weights; the worth of indentured bodies. Palimpsest means the canvas we see floats on a geology of other layers— sedimenting until the sea works loose what it petrifies in salts and lye, what it preserves for an afterhistory with no guarantee.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
