Free verse in homage to the spirituality of the swamp

Sepulcher of the Lotus

for Harriet and Orisia

She mantles the rosary of her lore across the flooded forest with a brush dipped and dripping.

Biding the pigments, she centers the priory of her canvas beneath fronds of marsh where the brackish yields to kneeling cypress stumped in congregation before the rebirth of the lotus.

Moon-blown nymphal fingers, each a welded swan in mourning, filigree strokes of swamp from rhizome and silt, filtering the apex gar and moccasin to crown the dome of stomata within the eddies of the mist.

Ringlet afloat, fragrant, perfection, her tepals echo tongues of the East where tolerance of choice rises from the murk to hatch from a clutch, find solace in hisses, and seek every soul in bloom.