Gene Stratton-Porter wrote about the Limberlost Swamp in her non-fiction book Music of the Wild. In the third section, she writes about the Music of the Marsh. She describes scenes that we see today at the Limberlost Swamp Nature Preserve, Loblolly Marsh Nature Preserve, Rainbow Bottom and Music of the Wild, the preserve named for this book. These preserves were all once part of the Limberlost Swamp, now called the Limberlost Territories. 

Enjoy Gene's words with photographs of today. 

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"I have seen coots running throughout a season in this swampy corner of a marsh, and it is as nearly typical of their location as any I know. The muck of such places is alive with worms, the grasses with insects, and the surrounding vines and bushes bear seed. It seems that birds of any habit might flourish there, and indeed I often have seen a little red-eyed vireo so busy in these bushes that I mam sure there was a nest and family, and when I landed and worked my way into the marsh I scared up a female Indigo finch [now known as an Indigo bunting] and soon found her nest in a thicket of blackberry and wild grape."

Coots at the Limberlost Swamp Nature Preserve. Photo by Randy Lehman.

Male Indigo bunting. 

"The five typical flowers growing in the water of the outer edge of all other vegetation are the arrowhead lily, blue flag, yellow lily, water hyacinth, white water lily, and differing members of their family. They are all beautiful plants of fine leaf and exquisite bloom; and there are some who will prefer one, and some another. My choice is the arrowhead, not only of marsh flowers, but among any, it ranks well toward first with me."

Blue flag at the Limberlost Swamp Nature Preserve. Photo by Terri Gorney.

Arrowroot at the Limberlost Swamp Wetland Preserve. 

Wild hyacinth growing in a ditch on an Amish farm. Photo by Terri Gorney.

This week's featured poet is L. A. Dubay. L. A. Dubay is a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist in Fort Wayne Indiana. She has a rewarding job working with people with disabilities. Her mission is to help people achieve their goals through recreation and leisure. 

Mother Tree

mother tree
shelter
natural shelter
spider and web
moth and gnat
nature's shelter

mother tree
humans within
unnatural 
her head first 
him feet first
a breech

mother tree
breech
unnatural act
in a natural setting
we plundered her
​searching for sensation

​Haiku

The cracks so remain
crevices of the river
rerouted for man

the lizard tail plant
filled with holes of the hungry
bugs that carry on

​The Wabash River at Rainbow Bottom 


The Indian Trail 

The Indian Trail
traders, hunters passage
into White-y world
Oh, how she came to welcome them
Oh, how they became unwanted
Oh, how their land and their wares were wanted.

The Indian Trail
poets, writers trespass
into Indian history
Oh, how they came to write
Oh, how they became curious
Oh, how they mourn and their hearts weep.

Savages, really. 

​The Way (it never was)

Rich in heritage and culture
The Indian way
The trail
The tears.

We relish the memory
wiped out
Relished 
too late.

Signs
Native heritage
learn about the way
it never was.
Learn about the way
white crime lies. 

Michael Brockley is this week's featured poet. He is a retired school psychologist who worked for 33 years in Adams and Wells Counties. His poems have appeared in such publications as Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, Clementine Unbound, Panoplyzine, Jokes Review, Third Wednesday, Atticus Review, and Gargoyle. In addition, Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan and Local News: Poetry about Small Towns are among the anthologies which have included Brockley's work. 

I eavesdrop on tourist conversations about dowsing for water and a ghost town haunted by a stage coach driver hanged by a mob. The raccoon skull I dragged from the sycamore is pale, scoured by the way time ravished and raises life on a flood plain. The eye sockets are empty. My career has vanished into the memories old men carve into their erratic moods. Anagram puzzle solutions and the definition of "pinwheel" stored now among madras shirts and scenes from the Man with No Name movies. I examine the emptiness in the dead mammal's skull. The slope of the brainpan long and shallow for a creature so clever. Among our group, the trail guide catalogs plant names, companions for my trip back to a drafty house on a street not named for a saint or an outlaw. Reed canary grass, lizard's tail, smartweed. I watch my finger pass behind a clearweed stem while my shadow falls across the plant's path. Late caterpillars cling to wild cucumber leaves. In the morning, I will awaken to abandoned agendas from the due dates of my working life's labors. I will notice my maple has not turned red mid-way through October but the leaves it has shed are crimson. On the trail someone tells a joke about rattlesnakes. The tour guide warns against trusting nature. What will I make of myself now that I am no longer me. 

Smartweed

Curt Burnette led the Rainbow Bottom hike in October.  He is standing by one of the giant sycamore trees that is there. 

Tiffany visits the Ceylon Bridge whenever her Fort Wayne oldies station plays "Come and Get Your Love." she has bound her name into hearts above Alex, Kirk, and Loki. Beneath the word "Redbone" spray painted on the wall above the spot on the floorboards where the body summoned by a teenage seance fell from the ceiling into the shadows that cover the floor. The ash trees across the river bed have been hollowed and bored by emerald beetles, and the frogs that once sang evening love songs along the bank have migrated across the road in pursuit of mosquitos and no-see-ums. Now when she arrives at dusk, chanting the chorus in the voice she has huskied from a Virginia Slims habit, Tiffany sprays elaborate valentines on the bare spaces left on the sideboards by Sam and Kacey and Jason and Holly. She signs "What's the matter with your mind, with your sign?" And twirls in the space where the darkness and the sunlight meet as Lolly Vegas celebrates what the heart wants. As the doves in the rafters look over Tiffany's shoulders to see if they recognize the new name.   
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