Inch By Inch

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder.

Erosion

.

I breathe clay, salt laced edges 

of a bank, jagged black–

a swamp’s reflected darkness.

Upside down the cypress grow

rooted to water, to sky.

Where is the beginning, the end?

Water has neither.

.

My soul is three fourths salt,

rusty anchors, rough red hands,

clay that smells of clouds

clouds that smell of water

foaming at the mouth of bays.

.

Salt marsh fertile with the rot

of logs, the dark green thick

of twisted trees, where blue

the herons breathe and breed

all fall, all washed clean.

.

Through the sneak of trees,

quiet bayous curve, then turn

to busy boated sounds.

Closer, the earth swallows.

.

I breathe the cypress.

Knotted shapes of faces

I have known

rooted in the mud for life.

If the roots are cut,

will the cypress die?

Or will they grow new knees,

water twisted, wet?

.
The water fills with dirt,

thick black asphalt, rows

of same faced houses.

Blue gilled thunder clouds

are growing; marshland

dying with the birth

of bulldozed earth.

.

We will be eaten, too.

Women who sweat nets,

men with bent backs,

shacks, little lapping boats,

all fall, all cut clean.

.

The bank will feed

the water clay;

drop by drop the clay

will make the circle break.

Quickly the water drinks.

Is that the reason

for the breath,

to die?

.

I sit with clouds;

multiply, divide.

Drop by drop the sky

will feed the water clouds,

broken

on the changing surface.

.

Just when I thought

the puzzle solved,

I taste the clay again,

fall softly in the salt

.

and faces in the clouds

will float downstream.

.