“Approaching Sunset” by  Zeralda LaGrange

*Behind Glass

Thirteen Anhingas and a sturdy Brown Pelican perch in a cypress tree. The thinnest line separates water from sky.

I look into the photograph as if it were a mirror.

I have seen the snakebird sail flawless lakes. Sink below water to sideways-spear small fish. Serpentine necks gloss the surface of a presumed danger, in the place where water holds everything secret.

Weighted bones and flags of wet plumage. Oil slick, ink-bodies
scrawl verse across the sky—

The photographer notes a language. Stilled in the capture, the semblance of harsh, croaking calls. The caul of ensuing night entraps them.

Each bird:  a point in the continuum, a tributary of exchanges extant in the Seen and Unseen.

And so it is with me.

© 2016 Clare L. Martin
*Renegade Writers prompted poem, from a February session held at the Lafayette Art Association Galleries, Lafayette, Louisiana and led by J.K. McDowell.  The poem is an ekphrastic response to a photograph by Zeralda LaGrange.