Dawn’s gray light drifts
across the floating turf.
Gusts drive from the northeast,
rippling the sawgrass plain.
Beneath a low ceiling
of gray and white and
steel-blue clouds
the marsh awakens
to diurnal duties.
The baby-doll cry of a nutria
rises from a stand of bull tongue
that punctuates the endless
brown and yellow.
On the horizon
a thousand red-winged blackbirds
rise and dip like the lash of a giant whip.
Beneath the brackish waters of a pothole
the thick black mud belches. Bubbles break,
releasing the pungent odor of rotting vegetation
and startling a mallard hen;
she bursts from the grass,
quacking an embarrassed alarm.

© 2010 Peter C. Marcantel