The Creature from the Murk
It could have been a boneless baby seal,
the lump of life you rescued from the murk
of the pond’s deep. You came there in a dream,
on impulse waded through the ooze, and eased
your hands into the verdant mystery,
then deep into the muck of bottom leaves,
and pulled her out, a glob of furry life.
You looked into her tiny opal eyes,
and felt her breathing in your palms, made
a goo-goo sound, on impulse hugged her softly
against your chest until the dream moved on.
But you remembered her when you woke up,
and think of her sometimes, especially when
the usual checks and contradictions tempt
you toward solution with a gun. You hug.
the memory of that life, and you move on.
David Landon was the winner of the 2019 Write Prize from Able Muse. His poems have appeared in the Dark Horse, Southwest Review (Marr Prize Runner-up), Georgia Review (featured finalist: Loraine Williams Prize), Painted Bride Quarterly, Think Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cumberland River, Subtropics, Southern Poetry Review (Guy Owen Prize finalist), Poetry Porch, and elsewhere. As an actor he has performed with the Nashville, Alabama, and New York Shakespeare Festivals, and with the Provincetown and New Orleans Tennessee Williams’ Festivals. He won the American Academy Poetry Prize at Harvard, where he was class poet. He is the Bishop Juhan Professor of Theatre Arts Emeritus at Sewanee: the University of the South.