The Livid Marsh

Down the decline of mythic hills to the long, flat plain of the wetland mind. 

Channels cut across the livid marsh, auburn peat and seaweed streams that bubble here and vanish beneath, only to emerge on another distant, blasted heath. Great green the moss that grows on yellow banks. Spores that cleave between the planes of coffin rocks, and trees with roots that bear no branches.

All cloud sullies forth from a pinned and sewn horizon, no trails will make it here - ever drawing back, across the far march of some further marsh. Fetid fields of sunken knees, the hobbled limbs of vegetable cadavers, breaking the lichen peel, like skin on mummified milk or the dry tides of lead paint. This is sour terrain, ailing sheens beaten phosphorescent by bludgeon wind. 

I know at the back of that clapboard horizon, beyond the bog, lies a great house with clear windows and clean views. It is tall and stark, a mansion without motion, filled with ancient tubs and brass. I will remain on the wrong side of the rushes, behind the livid marsh, a lost surveyor trapped in one still life.