Beth Morris

9 Feb

Yellow Legs

I wish I had yellow legs

like the ring-billed gulls

who strut along the beach;

unwelcome houseguests

expecting to be served.

Or, like the gray sandpipers

who dart in and out

of the ocean’s tides

waiting for dinner

to arrive at their feet.

And the great white heron

who steals through the marsh

on saffron stilts

stalking the minnow

just out of reach.

When you have yellow legs

nothing is demanded of you

except to be admired.

You move through the world

on crocus-colored limbs.

Affixed with a pair of permanent coins

you waltz through the turnstile

past the guardhouse

and over the gate

without paying the toll.

There’s no need for stockings

to hide your twisted stumps;

no shoes required

to cushion calluses and corns.

Imperfect posts transform into Art.

With lemon-painted props,

you can never get lost;

your friends will always find you.

Even strangers know who you are

and what you stand for.

And if you’re lucky,

like the purple gallinule

or the snowy egret

who grace the ground with beauty,

your toes will be topaz, too.

So when you leave this earth

and fly towards heaven

the vivid aura of saints and angels

will streak behind you;

gilded, like the sun.

A Moral Dilemma

Driving north on 441

he hears the dull thud and crunch

of animal flesh hitting the blacktop

before he sees it; a hypothermic lizard

has slipped from a treetop, bounced and bumped

along the roadway in its arctic catatonia

and settled under the front wheels of his pickup.

It’s twenty-seven degrees in the tropics

and the iguanas are dropping

like giant lime-green popsicles from

the Florida palms, frangipanis and bougainvilleas.

He could rev up the engine

and pulverize the pup; after all,

this far-flung remnant of the genus iguanodon

is by no means endangered. Hell no!

it’s not even a native.

It’s a mother f. . .’n illegal alien

that’s chomped its way north

from Lima to Lakeland, gorging itself

on the Sunshine State’s sweet bounty

and Boca Raton’s garbage.

Or, he could take the high ground,

wrap the slimy stiff in a blanket,

melt it down in his garage, and haul it

to the ASPCA in the morning.

He listened to his better angels

(and the voice of Jiminy Cricket),

but when the big newt woke up from

playing Rumpelstiltskin in the back of the truck,

it climbed into the front of the cab

to say ‘thank you’ to the sucker

and sent the driver reeling off the road

into a live oak that saw it coming.

The iguana survived; don’t know how the Samaritan fared.

He should’ve read more Jonathan Swift

and opted for “decreasing the surplus population.”

Bio: Beth SK Morris is Adjunct Professor of Speech Communication at PBSC, South Campus. She has been a participant poet at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival since 2009, and was the second prize winner in the 2009 Writers Network of South Florida Poetry Division for her poem, “Feeding Frenzy.”