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[ 3 poems by Liza Wolff-Francis ]
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The land before we came
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i.
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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.
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Its circle ear, a tympanum,
its habitat, the sound of a waltz,
its body, green camouflage.
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As a teenager, I wore combat boots,
though never camouflage.
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Camouflage for people is military wardrobe.
Parts of Atlanta were like battlefields,
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people fist fighting about race, others
hobbling along asking for spare change.
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To walk through those streets, I needed
combat boots, to run, to kick, to escape,
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but, as part of the natural world,
I don’t camouflage well into city.
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I could make a list of all the ways
people get by
and all the things to change.
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The bullfrog doesn’t live well on asphalted land.
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We are meant to be in connection with each other,
where no one is spare.
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ii.
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I imagine the land before we came.
Acres of thicket, trees and bramble.
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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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❀ ❀ ❀
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Wheelchair in Sand
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Even in this cool air,
a woman in a magenta
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bathing suit, unable
to stand alone, is held,
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at the edge of ocean,
by a man her height.
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Water billows and turns.
He stands her up as if
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he plans to stand her up
over and over again.
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Ocean pulls her into tide,
swallows her with mouth
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of whale. Her legs dangle
like bait, she is steady
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in his arms and I think
he must be a man with
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the heart of a whale. A young
woman yells Hold on Mama,
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runs for the chair, drags
its robot wheels through
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beach and saltwater until
it’s behind her and they push
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against swelling ocean
and sinking sand.
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❀ ❀ ❀
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Atlantic City’s Great Black-Backed Gulls
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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.
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Even people who’ve never seen the ocean, I think,
must know its waves, like a rhythm of Earth
that water must know even without knowing,
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just as grass knows sun,
like desert cactus know rain.
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It’s different just beyond the gulls.
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Shiny baubles and buildings,
casinos and their flashing lights,
siren sounds, bell-clanging promises,
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oohs, and ahhhs.
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Perfume brings back my grandmother.
A gasoline smell reminds me of riding
on a boat on a Georgia lake.
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I could never know a casino in my body
in the same way as I know
how thirst is quenched with water.
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If there were a hurricane here, like
the one headed toward Florida,
I would sense it in my muscles,
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my legs, my head, the heaviness
heaving my body into the menace.
I know that feeling, knew it once,
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don’t think it every completely left me.
Shape of storm pushes at all of nature—
and I feel it within me,
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like Earth feels it’s coming.
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I learn it at every threat of destruction.
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Liza Wolff-Francis
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.
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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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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Thanks, Jenny! ---B