Keith Melton

Altamaha 

Morning the acclivity of tilt across the vagabond road
Searching for coffee
In the still-born towns--
Resigned to stupefaction, enduring 

The twin pillars of feckless abandon
The heart’s tourniquet of doubt
Warning of God’s secret regret
A life given over to whimsy

And orange suns left beaming beyond the hill.  
And passing the nameless islands
The pulsing Tupelo
The pout of the Kaolin mines

In the ever-reaching plain of the Altamaha
The sky radiant, blue blazes 
In a vault of cumulus puffs, a composition of sea birds 
To hang pogies and shrimp.

And no need for fathoms 
The river broad 
And teeming with life, the marauding creeks, the foraging tides
The lonely pines hiding ibis, oystercatchers

Heron and gull  
The tides layering sea bass and trout
Knowing what God has charged 
Them to do--

To go down to the haggle and sacrifice
Beneath the supple glide of the Altamaha
The promise of the catch
The tidy wanderers fit for dying. 



Mr. Melton is a poet whose work has appeared in Amethyst, Compass Rose, The Galway Review, Big City Lit, Confrontation, Kansas Quarterly, Mississippi Review, The Miscellany, Monterrey Poetry Review, Deep Overstock, and others.   He resides in Bluffton, SC.