Leaving, what holds me back?
what is this backwards tug?
I lock the door and hang the key.
Driving south, low country
is a 3D photocopy
of what I’ve left:
Marsh stretching to the sea
with barrier beaches in between.
I’m pulled to what we know
though here there is a twist:
The mildewed heat curls
the linoleum in the grocery store
and, outside, palms rattle in the wind;
the same sound rattlers make,
camouflaged by the scrub
we’re walking through.
Signs picture raccoons and otters,
birds singing in the trees;
No mention of the cottonmouths
which crowd the swamp.
That’s what I came to see
and lean expectantly
into a blackened pool,
hoping to glimpse the one thing
that could kill me.
Chris Crockett
Chris Crockett is a technology and marketing consultant working in the energy segment in the US. His poetry has appeared in the New Ohio Review. He has a long-standing interest in the performing arts and poetry and was a Director of Poets Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. Chis currently lives in Ipswich, Mass.