It's Still Life

Gator

He’s down there
by the bridge
weighted down with mud
and wintering in the roots of
the greenest leafed trees.

The lord of dark shadows.
The god of swamp water.

Down there with his books,
and trinkets,
a few games,
two cats that wandered too close,
a chicken,
a gin bottle,
and his teeth. Always his teeth.

He’s waiting out
the coldest months,
numb as oxygen, and
sweeping his tail from side to side,

stirring up black water mud,
stirring up the Milky Way
and those aeroplane lights
that he mistook for
Orion’s constellation.

But for now,
he’ll just dig down into it,
and think about whatever it is
that big old gators think about.

These poems/prose are draft versions, written in participation of Miz Quickly’s prompts and Writers’ Digest (Poetic Asides) November poem-a-day challenge. The aim: to produce a chapbook for submission. ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter. Images are ©Misky, and created using AI-Midjourney.