Look at the swamp

cattails shred and shallow

water – spillage of swollen brooks –

grows a thin skin, ices over rotten

leaves, dry dead stalks, old flowers

In a fallen trunk, a natural circle

of shelter in a grown up tree

some tidy animal made a home

nested with moss and beech leaf

where some other kind of animal

stopped to blacken it

with purpled scat

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar, 2017