Sonneteering a Salt Marsh on Foote

I’ve decided to grace these pages with the genuine article, although the quality of which I cannot be so sure. But please accept my humble offering to the gods of blog for what it is, an unassuming representation of the finest verbal art form now several centuries old. It may not show the craft of a Sidney or the American know-how of an Edwin Arlington Robinson, but in its own crude way I think it will do. So settle down, sniff your favorite brandy, and indulge on this fourteen line confection called

The Great Salt Marsh

Between the island and the land lies marsh,
a desert ground of spartina and salt
water protected from indifferent harsh
terrains surrounding it. So by default
it's home to things that never stay too long
on land. The duck, mergansers, gulls or teal,
and other migratory shorebirds throng
to such a hydrologic commonweal
where all terrestrial authority
is balanced with salinity and flow.
Within that middle ground they're safe from sea,
secure from high society and show—
until late summer scores a hurricane
or autumn showers them with steel shot rain.

Ry Foote 2005