A poem about memories and heartache by David Tombale: Everglades

The environments we encounter in our lives can make up the background of our memories and our experiences and a poem like Everglades embodies that idea.

Everglades

The trees cast their shadows over me

and beneath their massive bulk scurry

mice and vole and in their passage I’m

reminded I’m alone, on a lonely pilgrimage

to the single elm hidden in the centre

scarred with a heart and our names and

a history not of its own, a past as full as the

waters of the Everglades, the current stirring

with the passage of a gator, in my mind that

scaly prince stalks the quiet world of my solitude,

creeps across the disarray of feelings that reflect my memories

and when he clamps down on my throat it will

be more than heartache that eats me whole.