In the Emerald City
Each verdant leaf is perfectly cut,
Like a million green stone adzes,
Full of deep green chlorophyl
Cutting saltwater, sunlight, and gas
Into vibrant energy
And shining with the stuff of life
“Wake up, wake up,” say the whipper wills,
that woosh through the warm evening air,
Abuzz with insects of all sizes and flavors.
While the long white quills of a graceful egret
Gently paint the sunset pink
In the mangrove canopy’s shade,
In slate and cinnamon colored water
Tiny silver fishes, recently born, school in sunlit shoals,
Between the buttress roots
And long legs of a great blue heron
Who takes his time between strikes
Like a picky groom with the hors d’oeuvres
The roots of the sea host anemones,
Tunicates, barnacles, and bryozoans
They are alive with colors,
That speak in gentle undertones,
Some are warm like flickering firelight,
Others are soft and cool like amethyst and topaz,
Hidden in the walls of an unexplored cave
It’s a vibrant vaudeville variety show,
With dancing crabs, hydrozoan feather boas,
Particle snow, bobbing jellies, glistening spider webs,
And tidal currents that ebb and flow
Streams of natural oil, shimmering like marbled fuel
Collecting and swirling in tight, muddy channels,
Full of freshly dropped mangrove leaves,
Sticks, bark, and spent blossoms
And from out of the ink-black mud,
A thousand gnarled periscopes,
The pneumatophore roots of the black mangrove
Break the surface and breath life like a giant lung,
Into the dense, anoxic sediments below
At the mouth of the estuary, in cooler, clearer waters,
Disguised as the pale sand, a guitar fish slides out into the open sea,
A stingray too flashes her grey skirts on the rippled bottom,
While a curious silver and crimson mullet makes himself known.
And a family of bottlenose dolphins, their bellies full,
Heads home to shallow seas,
Passing a gentle sea turtle who takes his final breath,
before pulling into the subtidal forest to sleep.
ARB