Today's poem is by Red Hawk

The Idea of Crocodiles
       

I have spent a good portion of my adult life
observing the connection between
thought and suffering,
between the mind's ability to imagine

and hold onto an idea in memory,
and the inherent fear which drives that process.
For example, we are in Lake Village on a bayou,
a body of water left by the Arkansas River

as it meandered toward the Mississippi then
changed its mind and took another route but
left behind this idea of a river, the memory of it.
We are preparing to swim in it when the old Black man

fishing near us says, They's crocs in there.
How do you know, I quiz him?
Seen one once, he replies and that
is that. We

do not go in. I don't ask him how long ago
he saw one, it would not matter if it was 50 years,
and only one, and it long dead, because
the imagination has got hold of it and

now the crocodiles exist and
we are afraid of them.

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Copyright © 2024 Red Hawk All rights reserved
from Book of Lamentations
The Bitter Oleander Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission