by Rosangela Batista

Afterone hurricaneafter another

I came to understand
this will-o’-the-wisp.

After the will-o’-the-wisp
I came to understand the wind
gravedigger’s toil on the sandy
barrier islands.

An impatient gravedigger,
this Florida Wind.
Exhumes carcasses of beings
who have not completed their Bardo,
who didn’t even lose their teeth.

That bituminous night
beyond the howl of the whirling
Sabal palms, the sudden bluish
flame flickered, the riverbank
appeared like the plume
of an exhausted rocket.

It grew and retreated, meandered
uncertain of the journey.
The light of the liquefied creatures
excavated from their dens
thrown by the winds
from here to there.

The dead breath
of the will-o’-the-wisp
from Florida shook
the blue-gill fish, alligators
from the NASA swamps.
The great blue heron ejected himself
heading toward the Atlantic like a war missile.

Rosangela posted her Portuguese version of this poem at facebook.com/Poems4Calm/

Rosangela Batista is a Brazilian-American writer based in Florida. Her poems have appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal, LitBreak, The Westchester Review, Poets for Science, and Gavea-Brown.