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Impressions from Alligator Lagoon 

by Richard Weaver

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A great blue heron rose
from the bulrush pool today
taking the sky underwing.
Now I float on my back
and the earth spins without me.
I fill the hollows of my eyes
with water, and the sun
becomes colors without sequence,
without pain, rimmed with gold.
this beauty that blinds me.

I’ve seen these patterns
on the backs of dolphins
following my skiff. They
play at escorting me here.
I’ve drawn them
like everything else:
concentric, mosaic.
Sometimes I laugh at them
as they leap and fall back,
leap again and fall back
over and over, tumbling with the tide.

​They dare me to catch them still
like the black-skimmer I drew
this morning. It died in the full sun
of my neglect. I will draw it again
tomorrow and the days after
​though it stares at me unblinking.​​

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Richard Weaver lives in Baltimore Maryland where he volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank. One day he hopes to make the last payment on his student loans. During the winter months he acts as an unofficial snowflake counter for the weather bureau.