Apalachee

Sea licked, lapped it, then fell back,

leaving Apalachee dry tide land.

South:

a sandy plain of palmetto

cabbage palm and scrub oak

scattered in pinewoods.

(Along rivers and in swamps

of map turtle and cottonmouth

sheltered by yaupon and bay,

the snakebird perches,

drying spread wing,

and ponders the sunken sky.)

North:

green-brushed gray hills

hiding red clay

that lids limestone skeletons

of a petrified desert, older

than vegetation.

(Water

has riddled it with caves.

It swallows rivers

and spews them out.)

East:

Wacissa, Aucilla, Suwannee—

rivers moving in and out

of the earth in their seams.

Midmost:

Wakulla

rising from deep water tables

holding in museum rooms

the pottery, carvings and tools

of men whose bones are guarded

by bones of beasts older than man:

only the transparency rising

into the river,

Wakulla,

crossed by a chain-link fence.

West:

Apalachicola, the unitary tongue

of four rivers stammering toward

one mouth as the landscape

slopes toward blue gulf

While Chipola echoes in its caves a Mass

for bats, crayfish and blind, pink salamanders.