Emily Bludworth

Galveston Island, Crystal Beach

The sea
puddles at the edge of the shore
as if lapping in a great shallow dish.
Magnolias and crepe myrtles mark a slow passion
in their flowerings, in their heft toward
the sky above. And the earth
rolls her shoulders,
turning.

Silt thickens
on the shore. My hand
rests there, five-fingered leaf,
veined and thin, remarkable
only as a shallow compression
in sand.

Mute Swan at Richmond
    It is a truly beautiful thing
    to behold one or two thousand
    tame swans upon the river Thames —
    Polydore Vergil, 1496

It progresses from the thickness of willow limbs
as if it is made from a papery substance
and moves among rowboats strung end to end.
From afar it appears to be so small,
but up close it is brimming and full,
big as a dog or a child.
Nearing the bank, it eclipses less large fowl
in its lunging for bread-crumb pellets,
blowing up out of the water, wingtips splitting air,
its great goosy neck bent, its mouth
falling open heavily. It knows neither
its nobility nor its wide flapping feet,
and it cannot help but wear
such awkward white.

Of the World

The morning sky is still colorless
and punctured at the horizon by branches.

The houses appear to be the same:
blue shutters on white,
green shutters on tan,
red brick with white trim.

Over the creek in the evenings
the moss still falls from the trees
like the weeping hairs of widows,
half-eclipsing the mandarin smear of the sun.

Oil rigs continue to nod
like mechanical horses.

And on deep and intimidating August nights,
shrouding itself in cloud, a circle of light
still moons above in a bed of midnight-blue.

They are as always.
I perceive their broad and dangerous face:
the sun, the trees, the fat-bodied moon,
all bathers in an enormous cosmic tub,
glistening and quivering wet.
They fold into the eternal moment.
I cannot transmute them into verse
except as the face of a great beauty
is reflected by a very small, inexact mirror.

Self-Portrait

In designing the Palm House in the year of 1844,
Decimus Burton made for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,
a display case for the velvet-green opulence of palms
from the Americas, Africa, and other Pantropics.  They shoot up
from the soil, Indo-mangrove roots slip down
into basement aquarium tanks, two staircases spiral
into the cloudforest zone where Cocos nucifera
acsend—among the showcase, suspended from other,

larger objects, bromeliads gather nutrients
from air encased in glass; draped across larger,
stronger plants, dull-gray strands of my native
Spanish moss fall from fronds like clumps
of hair.  Its proper name is Tillandsia; it ‘lacks roots
and its flowers are tiny and rarely produced.’

emilyvene@hotmail.com