State of Grace

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There is no warning of daylight here. It is strange to know that it is only twenty miles to the Gulf of Mexico and all that dizzying impossible white light, for here there is such darkness. Here when one can see the sky, it is almost always blue, but the trees are so thick nothing can make its way through them. Not the sun or the wind. And the ground never dries. The yard is rich mud with no definition between it and the riverbank. Tiny fish swim in the marks our feet make. The trees are tall and always look wet as though they’d been dipped in grease. Many of them are magnolias and oaks. Pods, nuts and Spanish moss hang in wide festoons. The river is the perfect representation of a southern river, thin and blond, swampy, sloppy and warm. It is in everyone’s geography book. I was not shocked at all when I saw it. I was not pleased, although it is quite pretty.

The moss is smoky and dreamy-looking. We can thank the Indians for that. It’s the hair of a girl who killed herself after her father murdered her lover.

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