V E R S E and I M A G E

My friend Shelly gets a text

from a woman she’s dating

down south with a picture

of a bullfrog the size of my

hand, caught in a bucket.

Its circle ear, a tympanum,

its habitat, the sound of a waltz,

its body, green camouflage.

As a teenager, I wore combat boots,

though never camouflage.

Camouflage for people is military wardrobe.

Parts of Atlanta were like battlefields,

people fist fighting about race, others

hobbling along asking for spare change.

To walk through those streets, I needed

combat boots, to run, to kick, to escape,

but, as part of the natural world,

I don’t camouflage well into city.

I could make a list of all the ways

people get by

and all the things to change.

We are meant to be in connection with each other,

I imagine the land before we came.

Acres of thicket, trees and bramble.

Humans measure all of this by acreage,

kilometers, miles, rather than

the jump reach of a bullfrog,

rather than the size of its tympanum

and whether it is larger than the eye.

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Even in this cool air,

a woman in a magenta

bathing suit, unable

to stand alone, is held,

at the edge of ocean,

by a man her height.

Water billows and turns.

He stands her up as if

he plans to stand her up

over and over again.

Ocean pulls her into tide,

swallows her with mouth

of whale. Her legs dangle

like bait, she is steady

in his arms and I think

he must be a man with

the heart of a whale. A young

woman yells Hold on Mama,

runs for the chair, drags

its robot wheels through

beach and saltwater until

it’s behind her and they push

against swelling ocean

and sinking sand.

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Each one like an animal

++++ you could spoon or cradle if they wouldn’t fly away.

They stand facing the wind, lined up

++++ away from the ocean.

It’s different just beyond the gulls.

Shiny baubles and buildings,

casinos and their flashing lights,

siren sounds, bell-clanging promises,

Perfume brings back my grandmother.

A gasoline smell reminds me of riding

on a boat on a Georgia lake.

I could never know a casino in my body

in the same way as I know

how thirst is quenched with water.

If there were a hurricane here, like

the one headed toward Florida,

I would sense it in my muscles,

my legs, my head, the heaviness

heaving my body into the menace.

I know that feeling, knew it once,

don’t think it every completely left me.

Shape of storm pushes at all of nature—

and I feel it within me,

like Earth feels it’s coming.

I learn it at every threat of destruction.

from 48 Hours Down the Shore, Kelsay Books, American Fork UT; © 2024

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Three writer friends escaping the grinding dailies for a few days together: on the one side ocean, mystery and seduction, infinite expanse of watery planet; on the other side greed and tinsel and different seductions, the exploited and the exploiting. Liza Wolff-Francis’s poems can be arms spreading wide cymbals of glass before they clash and shatter, or arms that lift again the creature in its brokenness and wish for healing. During 48 hours down the shore, as one says in New Jersey, Liza celebrates love and kindness and the dignity of surf and sea-creature. Never, though, does she overlook the struggle all around us, of person and of planet. She describes herself as ecopoet. I feel in these poems not only the ecology of our threatened and suffering earth, but also the social ecology, cultural ecology, human ecology so twisted and strained, so threatened and threatening that it is easy to become overwhelmed.

What to do when overwhelmed? My reptilian hindbrain is more likely to retreat than lash out. Close your eyes, close your ears and ignore the impending destruction. Or do lash out – hurt someone before they can hurt you. Or look there – a man is introducing his crippled lover to the surf. Listen – gulls are laughing with you as much as at you, and the waves’ approach and retreat murmur . . . you belong here. Small acts will save our planet, a million small acts of love, a billion. A poem is just such a small act of invitation. You are invited to advance rather than retreat. To embrace rather than to strike. Each act of love declares we are not giving up.

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Liza Wolff-Francis is the 8th Poet Laureate of Carrboro, North Carolina, USA. She teaches creative writing workshops, has written plays and reviews, and whatever is happening around the world or down the street, she never looks away. 48 Hours Down the Shore is available from Kelsay Books. More about Liza at http://www.lizawolff.com.

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