The Spill
spill
Will Watson
Will Watson is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Coast, where he specializes in American Literature. He lives "south of the tracks" in Long Beach, so the Gulf beaches are less than half a mile from his front door. Although northern born, he considers the Mississippi Sound, its adjacent waters and lands his adoptive homeplace. His poetry has appeared in New Laurel Review, Minnesota Review and Labor, among other places.
spooky poems about death keep spilling
out of me, all these images of unwinding,
of tumbling in surf, of dim, narrow doors,
trembling bridges, strange cities . . .
when what usually draws me
is, say . . the time it takes
a pecan tree to kick free of earth
the nut carried and buried
by spring freshet just so, and no deer or squirrel
disinters it, and it sprouts through the mould
towards light, forms leaves, bark
nuts and usually i'll make something
from those leaves
maybe compost or mulch
or agonize over the green thousand nuts
killing grass on the back fence
--can i crack them all? bake a pie?--
or maybe, like Uncle Walt
i'd just let them all root deep, deep
in some other soil; i'd like to write
about that dirt, how it teems with tiny
living bits, animalia, microcosms
of the great beast whose breath sounds
everywhere, all the time, if you listen
how even the rot there
is sweet, nutritious, life giving
but
there is a hole in the world
a gap in the Gulf
and from it spill
spooky poems about death
about drowning, unravelingÂ
about steep bridges, strange cities
and dim, narrow doors