I see pungent skunk cabbage
all the way down the boardwalk.
Layers of feelings stink.
Mosquitoes rub wings
next to my ears;
I want my pen to bite back.
Cattails are lined up
like microphones.
Red-winged blackbird rants
and then I remember reading
how Robert Frost ran away
to the Dismal Swamp
to confront his gnarled feelings.
The venom of a rattlesnake
could have stopped his heart,
but the poems he needed to write
uncoiled and struck instead.
