The Load of Sugar Cane
Inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem by the same name
by Michael Escoubas

Of all your Earthy Anecdotes, Mr. Stevens,
your Paltry Nudes and Invectives Against Swans,
I like your Load of Sugar Cane the best.

Somehow the sheer simplicity of a glade boat
scissoring its way through the marsh at dawn,
as killdeer call out plaintively, brings me

to a place of meditation. It is a place
known only to me in the quietude of morning,
when the sky is the color of rainbows, when wind

whistles as if calling me out of morning despair.
My spirit rises as birds on wing become colors
of hope and all things are given meaning

in the simplicity of a moment, when I,
like the shrieking killdeer, rise at the red turban
of the boatman: joy found under the rainbows.


Read 'The Load of Sugar Cane' by Wallace Stevens here.


Return to:

[New] [Archives] [Join] [Contact Us] [Poetry in Motion] [Store] [Staff] [Guidelines]