Cypress on Suwannee Sill

Okefenokee West NWR (The second image shows the cropped version for 6x9 and 11x17)

S: Still Scene, Southern Swamp

Perhaps especially with this—
a swamp in all its mossy stillness,

caught in a photograph by Douglas Eng—
the mind must impress some phrase,

must make an order out of metaphor,
for such is the way of reflection, and so:

the world, it seems, is turned in on itself
at the waterline—cypress and tupelo trees

like narcissists, solipsists, as if nothing
existed in the world except themselves,

especially not sound: not wing-beat,
not tail-slap, not splash, no sibilance

of the cottonmouth, only this silence,
and, because they are not razed (not yet

at least), the mind believes the trees proud,
and tells the ear to hear a cry, full of praise.

Poetry by Hastings Hensel, 2016