Classic Poem

There is more here than mist,
duckweed and spatterdocks.
A bowfin, three-feet long,
lurks amid the stalks

of cattails, preying on
a school of yellow bass.
A pickerel prowls amid
brown tamaracks and grass.

A snapper with musket shot
still lodged inside its tail,
devours a bloated frog,
exposing only its shell.

And at the water’s edge,
a towering black gum,
old as the liberty bell,
watches deaf and dumb.

Its leaves soon will turn red
for the three hundredth autumn:
a leaf for every brave
buried at the bottom.