The Lagoon
No one walks beside this still water
mouth that holds dark and light
a place for drowning dreams.
The lagoon guards its secrets
horse hooves pounding
an ancient track, ghost echoes
in the seiches rippling still water.
Silence where turtles lie tucked
in their shells, marsh wren asleep
in the cattails, deep down resting
bottom foragers, mud dwellers.
The lagoon swallows evening’s
light, the dying sun a hopeful strobe
promising tomorrow’s blue waters
splashing ducks, the laughter of children.
After the Edson Smith Photo Collection Andree Clark Bird Refuge
Frances Davis has written a column for Coastal View News for 25 years. Her work has appeared in the L.A. Times, Passager, Calyx, The Chattahoochee Review, Askew, The Hopper from Green Writers Press, and several Gunpowder Press anthologies. She is a winner of the Lamar York prize for nonfiction and also a Pushcart Prize nominee. Also by this poet: “Honeymoon“