The Light in the Marsh Grass – Vandal Poem of the Day

was alive: small creatures aglow and crawling

one after the other down each tall green blade—

thousands of them bending at all angles—

along the quaggy edge of the salt marsh cove

the three of us had paddled our kayaks into . . .

luminous bits of green-gold sliding down

the myriad stalks, but inside them, as if the marsh

were sucking down the warm light through

innumerable living straws, drop after drop

in a wavering, steady, mesmerizing rhythm,

and for once no explanation we could think of

(that unseen ripples on the cove’s mirrory stillness

focused the late sunlight in eely ribbons

that scrolled down the blades of spartina)

could diminish the marvel we had chanced upon,

and we gave up trying to explain it, gave ourselves

to it—as if we had ingested some hallucinogen

that opened our eyes to what was there all along

but had gone unnoticed, each of us in our own pod

of selfhood floating on the fetid, primordial cove

now held together in awed suspension by these grasses

aswarm with lights that also flowed in waves through us,

wanting it not to stop, asking ourselves why

we’d never seen what had been going on for eons,

asking how we could keep it, knowing we could not.