Fortuitous Poem by Robert Penn Warren

A month from now,
In early April,
At the time when far away,
Outside the city,
The water hyacinths would be covering every inch
Of bayou, lagoon, creek and backwater,
With a spiritual-mauve to obscene purple,
Violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid,
Throttling mass of bloom over the black water,
And the first heartbreaking, misty green,
Like girlhood dreams,
On the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf,
And not a damn thing else,
And the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick mocassins
Would heave out of the swamp
And try to cross the highway
And your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump
And make a sound like kerwhush
And a tinny thump when he slapped heavily up
Against the underside of the fender,
And the insects would come boiling out of the swamps
And day and night the whole air would vibrate with them
With a sound like an electric fan,
And, if it was night,
The owls back in the swamps would be whoo-ing and moaning
Like love and death and damnation,
Or one would sail out of pitch dark
Into the rays of your headlights
And plunge against the radiator
To explode like a ripped feather bolster,
And the fields would be deep
In that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass
Which the cattle gorge on and never gets flesh over their ribs,
For that grass is in that soil
And no matter how far the roots could ever go,
If the roots were God knows how deep,
There would never be anything
But that black, grease-clotted soil
And no stone down there to put calcium in that grass.