Three Places in Savannah

1. Wormsloe Plantation

We walk beneath damp drapes of Spanish moss
between long rows of centuried live oak.
I splash fifteen paces, from trunk to trunk
while you skip lightly over the puddled
rain that has flowed into the rutted path.
Your southern sensibilities charm me.

Our late day shadows are hidden within
the lattice of sunlight barely squeezing
through warp and weft of branches overhead.
We wonder if the man who planted here
lived to walk this roadway, shaded and cooled
beneath the canopy he imagined.

His great-grandson lives just over the hill
because he willed it so.
 

2. Bonaventure Cemetary
 
Upon the autumn worn marker
pebbles lie in haphazard scatter
waiting for wind to sweep them free
only to be found then paid again.
These are the wages of verse in stone.
 
                    we danced to your lyrics
                    we cried and we laughed
                    we made love deep into the night
                    we named a river for your song
 
I search the ground nearby and find
a polished agate, brown and orange,
hiding among the fallen leaves.
I place it upon your grave and return
words you shared with me.
 

3. Tybee Island
 
Long deep thunder rolls
while in a lightning laced dawn
a single bird cries.
 
Love lurches awake
graycast and unforgiving
as the ocean rage
that hurls darkened clouds
horizon to horizon
lighthouse to mountain.
 
Buried in mourning
love-bruised melancholic sky
she knows that some dreams
are best forgotten.
 
The sea never remembers
it only reminds.

"Three Places in Savannah" first appeared in Goliath Magazine