I leave the Interstate where Georgia is impossible to see,
take Highway 17, through towns and hamlets under canopies

of beautiful live oaks, its heyday of '50s car culture a time warp
of abandoned or still used buildings -- the Betch-Yers Bar & Grill

in an old Stuckey's -- or a motel's office with green house plants
hanging from ornamental aluminum porch columns, white pickup

out front, the horseshoe of guest rooms stretching from it empty,
checkerboard of old tarps on the decaying roof. After miles

of pine flatwoods, the bottomlands of the South Newport River
are bayous of green algae ponds under pines and oaks,

and I'm drawn to turn off at the boat ramp road where scrub oak,
pines, and cedars border the marsh, down the potholed asphalt,

past tossed Styrofoam meal boxes and cardboard twelve-pack
cases to the boat ramp's concrete descent into tea-dark water

where I turn the car off, listen to the buzz of cicadas, wonder
how long it took for a purple flowered vine I see to creep

through the high-tasseled grass at water's edge, imagine
the benthic world of trout and sea bass under the dark water,

listen to the sweet warbles of songbirds. Then, the motorized zip
of a jet ski sounds around the bend of the river's oxbow,

reminds me I have an appointment in a city's traffic down the road.


© by Steven Croft.
Used with the author's permission.