"Calusa Wail"
Calusa wail up and down
the great blackwater river,
their words fall to whispers
then rise again above
thickets hammocks
miles and miles to the eye
in a night thunder.
The journey from
bad to perfect
looks like a maze when
flying overhead. Its lost
direction defies a theory
on second thought. We
are all the bodies of conquests
of the conquered too losing
winning off and on share
a common ending
all the while revenge or regret
is no way to live
unless in a vacuum. Northwest
sky rains nearby.
So what of the Calusa
and what of me? I imagine
the last eighty families
sailing to Havana where they
either died or became us
and the cattle farmers
who replaced them
who’ve cleared a place like
a village or a road, buried
their dead in the same ground
fear the invader his one foot
unshod, leaving us always
unprotected. And down
these streets the wailing
lifts and settles, goes on
every night again until
the sun sheets west downriver
to Matanzas. Mound Key
was quiet this morning. The tides
are in control. Only brightness
dapples through mangrove,
our shells and bones.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. Ward Abel, poet, composer and performer of music, teacher, retired lawyer, lives in rural Georgia, has been published hundreds of times in print and online, including The Reader, Istanbul Review, Versal, Yale Angler’s Journal, Pudding, Indian Review and others, and is the author of one full collection and nine chapbooks, including Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), and Digby Roundabout (Kelsay Books, 2017).