Day 5: We Don't Believe, We Only Fear

For today's prompt I wrote off of the quotation, "We don't believe, we only fear." I've been at baseball games all day, but in before the first one, I took a walk in the Laguna, a reclaimed marsh next to the baseball field. Here's a poem about the walk:

We Don't Believe.  We Only Fear.

This morning, as I walked the marsh, the air

was alive with birdsong. Brier paths still muddied

by last nights rain tunneled around the large pools

that teemed with life. Seems impossible that

these were once cesspools for the sewer plant.

Two young naturalists look up into a blue sky

"What do you see?" I ask. "Not much yet." They with shy smiles.

After that, I walk the whole marsh as if I were a cartographer spelling home

Or I take you back.

When I reach the end I find the same two naturalists this time holding a four foot garter snake that coils peacefully around the man's bare arm. And I am surprised not to startle.

Fear is like that; when you least expect it

all of the restoration you've done

cleaning up what's come before

pays off and suddenly there is only

the echoing calls of birds, warm strobes of light

and the quiet naturalist waving to you

holding a four foot snake

as you continue on your way.