Marianne Szlyk
Maryvale Park 2019
A red-winged blackbird hangs and sways
on last year’s reed. Gray fluff still clings.
New reeds unfurl, not yet quite tall
for this or any other bird
who swoops and calls in flight.
A deer stalks through the swamp,
but I await last summer’s turtle,
creature that I mistook for stone.
The minnows’ school is bustling
downstream past empty bottles
of water and Tropical Fantasy
from our lottery stores.
The left behind, one fish flirts
with rocks, with bottles’ mouths.
I wonder what will remain here
as climate changes, as oceans rise:
mosquitoes rising from algae bloom,
trim women walking robot dogs
they will not outlive,
young men guzzling soda and dropping
bottles in the swamp
as deer slip in and track this path.
Maryvale Park 2019
A red-winged blackbird hangs and sways
on last year’s reed. Gray fluff still clings.
New reeds unfurl, not yet quite tall
for this or any other bird
who swoops and calls in flight.
A deer stalks through the swamp,
but I await last summer’s turtle,
creature that I mistook for stone.
The minnows’ school is bustling
downstream past empty bottles
of water and Tropical Fantasy
from our lottery stores.
The left behind, one fish flirts
with rocks, with bottles’ mouths.
I wonder what will remain here
as climate changes, as oceans rise:
mosquitoes rising from algae bloom,
trim women walking robot dogs
they will not outlive,
young men guzzling soda and dropping
bottles in the swamp
as deer slip in and track this path.
Marianne Szlyk is a professor of English and Reading at Montgomery College. She also edits The Song Is... a blog-zine for poetry and prose inspired by music (especially jazz). Her book, On the Other Side of the Window, is now available on Amazon. A poem of hers appeared in Issue 3 of Young Ravens Literary Review. Her poems have also appeared in of/with, bird's thumb, Loch Raven Review, Solidago, Sycorax Review, Red Bird Chapbook's Weekly Read, Music of the Aztecs, and Resurrection of a Sunflower, an anthology of work responding to Vincent Van Gogh's art. She invites you to stop by her blog-zine and perhaps even submit some poems: http://thesongis.blogspot.com