This morning, everything is still—
the birds wrap their wings about them,
the alligators lie and dream in their frozen swamps.
Their minds are full of sunshine and the taste
of blood, which is only another way
of saying hope—
hope you can sink your teeth into,
hope that is salty and sweet on the tongue,
hope with wings and feathers
and sinew and bone— the memory
carrying them through the long space
between heartbeats
I’m part of a generative poetry workshop that meets on Zoom, and this poem came out of that. Everyone sends around a poem they like beforehand, and reads it at the start of the meeting; that’s the inspiration for the writing time. It finishes with everyone sharing what they wrote. This one, however, actually came from an NPR article that someone was describing during the meeting (and which I’d seen a photograph from): alligators were “hibernating” because their ponds had frozen during the cold snap, with just the top of their snouts above the ice so they could breathe. Apparently their hearts beat only a few times a minute during this time; once it warms up and the ice melts, they wake up and are completely fine!
