The Road Beneath Our Feet

The Swamp Swallows Everything

The swamp swallows everything, nutritious and noxious alike.
Leaves and twigs fall from the trees overhead,
lie on the water a while and then slowly sink,
changing from solid to liquid in slow motion,
even as the still water thickens into sludge.

When a boater tosses a soda can overboard
and discharges gasoline from the motor,
the swamp ingests that too.
The can will rust and bleed its colors
as it tilts and drops from sight.
The gas spreads across the bog like a flattened rainbow,
beautiful like so many poisons, and finally thins to nothing.

We too are swamps, jellied blood and organs in a thin skin sack.
We too swallow the tasty and the toxic,
sweet peaches and spoiled beef, kind words and bitter insults,
digesting it all into a soup of decay, slowly moving 
toward the liquification beneath the grass.

— Geoffrey Himes