Fishing for Ekphrasis in an Urban Lagoon, 2

This post is a continuation of something I started on my Medium page, which you can read here. I had a wonderful afternoon recently at Austin’s Laguna Gloria, writing, wandering, photographing. Below are 3 more poems, with their relevant Polaroids, from that day. (Read more about the sculpture garden at this link.)

Water Woman

Snake, they called me.
Temptress.
They’re right: it’s my calling
to call to them.
This voice of mine
with its calm sweetness
is bound to be a magnet
away from that hard rough world.

They fear the sea,
but I know it
like I know my body
like my soul knows that one day
it will answer a magnetic call
of its own

The Sorcerer’s Burden

One would expect a great number of
bits and pieces to be used
in the process of conjuring,
odds and ends with magical purpose
going about their business in some
mystical, unfathomable way
one that maybe even the sorcerer
doesn’t understand
He learned these things long ago,
as an apprentice
rolling up his star-studded sleeves
and donning his cap to get stuck in
problem solving
the only way he knows how.

But storage – that’s a problem for everyone
when there’s a lot of this and that about
scraps and leavings that need
to be stashed

A jar of earth is a good trap
for those tidbits that defy reason
and normal everyday laws
that require a secret keeping place
that need a bit of earth to cage them in

The True

Stone on stone, I piled the sturdy
blocks of foundation
building the weight of my reality
chiseling away at whatever debris
had barnacled onto the truth I held inside

So now, today, I am heavy-rooted
to the voracious earth
a stoic sentinel to sweet veritas
welcoming observation and
whatever comes my way

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Thank you for reading!