Everything is silent in the swamp
as I walk along the raised path
above the foul hyperactive muck.
Not a peep from the marshland creatures
the placards promised–
only others like me huffing and shuffling
with their casual, casuistic chatter
stroller and walker clicking
off steps, dissipating paces
past the array of sunning Stinkpots
and the young dad tormenting his toddler son
maintaining a 10-pace lead
the whole time the kid wanting to chuck
his emptied soda cup into the Mountain
Dew-colored morass
I stop to rest and dig
out a book (in this case The Collected
Longer Poems of Hayden Carruth) and when I read
“out of silence/words gather”
an army of frogs, a knot of toads
break into my realm with extended trills
pebble-clicks and pitched peeps
jug-o-rum basslines, boinks, and snores
drowning me out with their critical, gossipy
sarcasm–halting just short of outright dismissal
that stops when I stop and starts up
when I resume.
—
Leonard Kress has published fiction, poetry, translations, non-fiction, in Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, etc. Among his collections are The Orpheus Complex, Walk Like Bo Diddley, Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. Craniotomy Sestinas appeared in 2021. He has grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council.
