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Spanish Moss

A thicket hides the remnants of a grange,
An antebellum place of ghosts and rue—
A gothic ruin—tropical and strange
Which even egrets shun. The faintest clue
Of why is whispered when the trade wind moans
Of shadowed secrets from this voiceless void
Of cotton grown from bone; of distant groans
From graves that even daring men avoid.

The roof was taken by a hurricane
And Spanish moss now drapes down from the oaks;
It hides decaying walls and phantom pain—
And what it doesn’t fully veil it chokes.
It hints at genteel planters with green skill
Who did not think it strange to trade in men
Drawn out of Africa against their will.
But nothing now can change what happened then.

Strange screeches fill the bayou with the songs
Of alligators, gulls, flamingos, cranes
And spirits wounded by a hundred wrongs.
Though stains are slow to fade despite the rains
Soft mist becalms the storms of history,
Obscuring old ideas all but defeated.
Though few can pierce this grange’s mystery,
What happened here will never be repeated.

A snake rests in the old shell of a turtle.
A panther roars; a marsh rat flees a vulture,
As tapestries of sawgrass and crape myrtle
Bring beauty to this region’s cryptic culture.
The North Star here is low and faint of fire
Compared to states of colder latitude;
But Florida’s full moon ascends much higher,
Illuming my perplexed beatitude.

.

.

Pink Flamingos

This park is one I much adore:
A mangrove forest by the shore
Where I can rest and breathe sea air
And watch flamingos flame and soar.

You’re truly kind to push my chair—
I promise to cause no more care.
The view will soon be sunset red
And we are very nearly there.

I’ve trod as far as I need tread,
And all I wish to say I’ve said.
No tears! You have no cause to sigh
But rather celebrate instead!

Those pink flamingos—watch them fly
Alive and free from plaintive cry!
Like me, they know the Gulf is nigh.
God bless them as they cross the sky.

.

.

Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.

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32 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    You really are enjoying your recent move to Florida and are sharing with rich words of wonderful classical poetry your new experiences. You composed a creative tableau of vivid images of a hypothetical, yet realistic history of the haunted plantation. I can feel the spirits surrounding you as you gaze on the scene. I can imagine the fun of watching “Pink Flamingos.”

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Roy, for your generous comment. I am indeed enjoying my new surroundings. There is much history here — though you’re right to see the haunted plantation as quite fictional. But inspiration is inspiration and there are many amazing sights here to see and write about!

      Reply
  2. Bruce Phenix

    Brian, These are lovely poems, beautifully constructed and full of sensitivity as well as sharp observation. Thank you.

    Reply
  3. Julian D. Woodruff

    Brian, I’m glad to see you respond so observantly and imaginatively to your new surroundings. I was especially curious what your impressions might be, since I was recently in your general neck of the woods (Lake Mary / Orlando; the 1st time for this northerner) for the birth of twin grandchildren. I’ve started poems with comparable reactions but have been too busy and unsettled since to finish them.
    I hope you can deliver more like these exploring the deep south. I don’t suppose you’ll turn into a southern writer, but the work of a disinguished transplant will always hold value.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Julian! I have not yet visited Orlando so you’ve beat me to it. But I’m intrigued by the poems on Florida that you’ve started writing. I hope you finish them because I’d love to read them! If you come back down here, look me up! I’m in the Tampa Bay area.

      Thinking of taking on the mantle of “southern writer” makes me smile. I love the idea but I’ll probably never be more than a transplant (distinguished or otherwise.) don’t think William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams or Harper Lee (or their ghosts) have anything to worry about!

      Reply
  4. Paul A. Freeman

    What a great piece of Gothic poetry Spanish Moss is.

    And ‘Pink Flamingoes’ must be the most upbeat poem about impending death I’ve ever read.

    Nicely done, Brian.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Paul, I’m very grateful for this kind comment. Thank you. I loved writing Spanish Moss with a Southern Gothic tone. Florida flora and fauna gives me so much to work with! And although Pink Flamingos is one of the simplest poems I’ve written, it’s one I keep coming back to. I hope to have that upbeat attitude when my time comes.

      Reply
  5. Jeff Eardley

    Brian, these are truly amazing to read. I love the “egrets shun” “secrets from” internal rhyme in “Spanish Moss” and “Nothing new can change what happened then” is such a common sense statement to all those baying for reparations for the past.
    The wheelchair line in Pink Flamingoes is pure genius and focuses the reader perfectly on the sad reflections of the subject, reflecting on his limited time left. Can you please, never go into that, “All I wish to say I’ve said” territory. These two poems have made my day today. Thank you so much.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Jeff!

      I’m really glad you focused on that “Nothing now can change what happened then” line because you immediately grasped my intent — a statement that reparations for slavery makes no sense. It will bankrupt the taxpayers, it forces people who are completely innocent of any wrongdoing to pay money to other people who are completely free from the source of injury. It’s been 160 years since slavery in the U.S. was abolished. Discriminating against white people who never owned slaves (my earliest progenitor arrived in the U.S. in 1898!) and putting it in the hands of black people who were never slaves is nothing more than a form of woke social engineering. Ill-conceived, fatuous, deeply racist.

      You also allow me to remind readers that Republicans are the party that freed the slaves, not Democrats. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican (so was Grant) and it was Republicans who pushed for preserving the Union. Democrats would like to forget these inconvenient facts.

      Especially delighted, Jeff, that you liked Pink Flamingos and that wheelchair line. It’s a short poem and every line counted, so I’m glad that line gave you the information you needed to understand this speaker. And I’m especially glad that it touched you. All my best.

      Reply
  6. Adam Sedia

    As a lover of Florida, myself, I absolutely had to read these, and of course they didn’t disappoint.

    “Spanish Moss” would make for a great Halloween poem as much as a geographic one. It gives a haunting picture of a haunted place, and its images wonderfully convey the once-thriving plantation and its vanished world abandoned to the tropical wilderness – a sense of desolation with a supernatural eeriness hanging over it.

    “Flamingos” is a valedictory, almost autumnal work, introspective yet cheerful in its sense of self-fulfillment. I was not expecting that tone about the vibrant and elegant birds, but you make it work wonderfully, putting a unique twist on the subject.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Adam, I am delighted that you enjoyed both of these poems! Thank you! It’s funny that with all the references to a clear haunting, I don’t think of Spanish Moss as spooky so much as contemplative. And yet I really did cram it full of southern gothic imagery. Now that you mention the supernatural eeriness, I don’t think I’ll be able to look at it any other way!

      I’m also very happy that you liked Flamingos. They are an amazing bird with such beauty and charm. If you see my note to Joe Salemi, I give them a very oblique relation to the rising phoenix (“watch them flame and soar”) and that allows their Gulf-ward movements to give the speaker hope for his own future after death. People don’t often think of them in flight, but flamingos do indeed fly and they are repopulating Florida. I have the feeling my poetry has not seen the last of them!

      Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    The imagery of long-forgotten ruins covered in the encroachment of nature is a sure-fire winner in poetry, and goes as far back as Anglo-Saxon writers. “Spanish Moss” follows in that tradition, and honors it. Yapko adds troubling thoughts about history and its many wrongs, so that the piece will not simply be nostalgic or antiquarian.

    “Pink Flamingos” is disquieting, because there is an aura of impending doom about the thing. Yapko has made the flamingos into symbols of souls finally bursting free from the limitations of the flesh, and seeking to return to God. The poem brought to mind the ending of “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens, where a similar image of birds is described as descending
    “downward to darkness, on extended wings.” But Stevens was agnostic in tendency, and his ending is one of uncertainty. Yapko is a believer, and his birds suggest celebration, upward movement, and triumph.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much for this insightful analysis of my poems, Joe. You are so right about long-forgotten ruins. I think immediately of Tintern Abbey which has inspired painters as well as poets (notably Wordsworth.) Ruins are a really evocative subject, whether it be the statue in Ozymandias, Browning’s Love Among the Ruins and probably a hundred other poems. I have a painting in my living room which shows the overgrown ruins of the Roman forum in the 19th Century. You would know better than I, but I think this was a particularly potent subject for poets and painters during the Romantic period.

      I’m especially pleased by your full understanding of the symbolism of the flamingos in the second poem. You have it exactly right — celebration, upward movement and triumph. I was careful to use the word “cross” in the line “See pink flamingos cross the sky.” I also used the word “flame” in the line “watch flamingos flame and soar.” I was, of course, referring to the bright color of the bird. But the meaning of flamingo is derived from Spanish or Portuguese for “flame-colored.” And this flame made me consider the phoenix which bursts into flame and then rises again from its own ashes.

      Reply
  8. Margaret Coats

    What an eerie poem, Brian! You seem to be moving in and out of Florida observations and Deep South discoveries that range beyond. Spanish moss becomes a symbol that allows swaying motion in time and through places of ghostly consciousness. This is entirely “other” to my views growing up with it as a third-generation Floridian, but even those have contradictions. The moss was a lovely decorative frame and an irksome pest to battle with bamboo poles. Your history reflections have an admirably realistic ring to them: the past cannot be changed; the present and future are different as the Florida moon rises higher. The skies are remarkably unlike more northern ones as stars come into view. I found this out when I first did stargazing serious enough to identify constellations. I was studying a book printed in New York which told me never to expect to see Scorpio’s tail; then I went out and there was every single luminary in full view and bright focus. I don’t wonder that you enter the poem at last with that first person pronoun “my” in perplexed beatitude.

    “Pink Flamingos” is a comfortable scene of aging that is not the least morbid or gloomy. Florida has long had a disproportionate percentage of seniors in the population. Smarter juniors learn to live kindly and wisely and happily with them. The poem is a hearty celebration of that shared lifestyle.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much for this insightful comment, Margaret — one from a fellow Floridian! As a new transplant to Florida I can’t help but be thoroughly charmed by the spanish moss which hangs down from trees throughout the region and which I find to be terribly romantic and somewhat gothic. That must be amusing to someone who was raised with them, but we Yankees have always had a soft spot for such traditional southern imagery — the “moonlight and magnolias” Rhett Butler talks about in Gone with the Wind.

      I really enjoy your discussion of the astronomy of Florida. It really is much farther south than people realize. For me in this poem, I felt I was taking a bit of a tone-change risk by turning my gaze upward from the flora and fauna of Florida to the skies above it. What I hope I achieve is to consider that something higher looms over all that we small human beings do. The North Star here represents a certain moral clarity. This is consistent with a history in which the north’s Republican-led moral-clarity led to fighting the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. That north star represents something unchanging and unyielding — something higher.

      But then to be fair to Florida, which is much closer to the plane of the ecliptic than more northern states, it benefits from a much higher moon — a source of light that is perhaps enjoyed more here than in other states. And this is something I have seen since living here. Florida is more genuinely harmonious among different peoples, races, ethnicities, than any other place I’ve ever lived. It is more integrated and yet there is substantially less racial tension here. When leftists claim that Florida is intolerant it means they’ve never been here and are getting third-hand fake news. Florida is far and away more tolerant than most other places. But it has a sense of moral clarity and boundaries that leftists resent. It’s not that it’s more uptight — it’s that it’s more grown-up. Maybe that’s the effect of having a population which skews more to the elderly than most other places.

      Thank you again, Margaret, for your kind words and for giving me an opportunity to explain some of my thinking here.

      Reply
  9. Jeremiah Johnson

    Brian, I like the seriousness and wonder you attach to those flamingos! You remind me of Bryant’s poem, “To a Waterfowl”

    (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51861/to-a-waterfowl)

    That and I love what the animals are about in “Spanish Moss” – reminds me of some passages in the OT prophets where it talks about the ruins of civilizations being haunted by wild animals. Particularly that snake resting in the turtle’s shell. What a startling image!

    On a side note, have you ever toured the University of Tampa – their administrative has same fascinating architecture to it!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Jeremiah, thank you so much for this — especially after your wonderful Flamingo poem! I just read the Bryant poem you cited to (at first I thought you meant SCP’s inestimable SJB) and it is absolutely wonderful. I must read more of his work.

      Thank you also for the kind words about Spanish Moss. I had not ever considered an Old Testament connection to this poem — not even the snake — but now that you’ve brought it up that is something I must ponder. I’ve been reading the Old Testament prophets (I’m up to Obadiah) and it seems like these types of images permeated into my subconsious as I was writing.

      I’m sorry to say that I’ve only seen the University of Tampa from the exterior — the Henry Plant Museum building and its unusual Moorish architecture is particularly visible from the Riverwalk here. It looks really charming. Now that you’ve reminded me, I will make a point of going to actually explore the campus a bit.

      Reply
  10. Shamik Banerjee

    There are so many scenes here to call my favourite. You made the imagery come alive with your beautifully constructed, lucid lines. The rhyme scheme used in Pink Flamingos is interesting. I’d love to know what it’s called and maybe use it in a poem of mine someday. Thanks for these, Brian.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Shamik! I’m so grateful for your appreciation of the imagery in Spanish Moss. I loved writing about some of the Florida landscape here.

      Thank you also for mentioning the structure of Pink Flamingos. You now give me an opportunity to call attention to an “Easter egg” in this poem about an ambiguous contemplation of death: Robert Frost. My poem’s structure is based on Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” with only a couple of slight modifications in my carrying over rhyme from stanza three to stanza four and eschewing the reptition he uses at the end. But “Woods” is, for me, the ideal poem regarding the contemplation of death as inspired by nature. So I wrote this as something of an homage to Frost and I hope the careful reader would get a sense of his presence here. But then I twist it around. Frost’s speaker says “not yet” but my speaker says “the sooner the better.” Frost’s speaker sees winter grays, snow and cold. My speaker sees the warmth of the Gulf of Mexico and the flaming color of pink. In a sense this may be an answer to Frost more than just an homage. All this being said, I don’t know if this poetic structure has a name. I think of it as “Frostian” but that’s my made-up description. My structure (Briambic, perhaps?) differs from Frost’s and is as follows: four stanzas of iambic tetrameter, aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd.

      Thank you, Shamik, for letting me share this about the poem!

      Reply
      • Brian A. Yapko

        A rubaiyat! A form I’ve never heard of before and yet have written in. Isn’t that amazing? Thank you very much for the research, Mike! And thanks for the kind words! Oh, and I just realized after re-reading Stopping by Woods that I didn’t deviate from Frost in the least. He did rhyme those last four lines. My mistake.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Here’s another AAxA quatrain from Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, and it also deals with ancient ruins overwhelmed by nature:

        They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
        The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
        And Bahram, that great Hunter — the wild Ass
        Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.

        (FitzGerald translation)

      • Shamik Banerjee

        Dear Brian, 

        I greatly appreciate your taking the time to write this elaborate response. Yes, after re-reading your poem quite a few times and contrasting it with Frost’s, I finally got the crux. Your speaker says that all has been said and done; there’s no earthly care left, and he gladly welcomes death. Frost’s speaker says he has many things to attend to. Wonderful! You have executed the rhyme scheme perfectly, and I’m glad to have come across this poem. 

        Also, thank you, Mr. Bryant, for the information and sharing the link. I’ll definitely try this form someday.

  11. C.B. Anderson

    Already in the first stanza you have written strange tropes that would put Dylan Thomas to shame, or at least make him temper his greatest excesses. But later on you sever the least connection to conventional reality and instate a world where images are the only facts. After everything is boiled down, this poem should stand as part of your lasting legacy.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you for this wonderful comment, C.D. I am actually amazed by the idea of leaving “conventional reality and instating a world where images are the only facts.” You’ve identified a poetic concept which I need to incorporate into more of my work. Thank you especially for the “lasting legacy” comment. That means a lot to me.

      Reply
  12. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Brian, this magnificent duo sings to me in language I relish. I love the musicality of “Spanish Moss” with its adept employment of assonance – all those spooky ooh and oh sounds – rue (great used as a noun) /ruin/clue/moans/shadowed/bones/groan in the opening stanza together with the delicate touches of even egrets, genteel/green, becalms/storms… and this mellifluous list goes on. The linguistic picture you paint is eerie and atmospheric. I love the way you draw upon historical events to add to the significance of the scene. I especially love the closing stanza… that snake “resting in the old shell of a turtle” together with “tapestries of sawgrass and crape myrtle” is a wonderful juxtaposition of images that highlights the ever-present danger lurking amid the beauty (my eyes are always on the swivel in wild beauty spots on the coastal plains of Texas). The term “cryptic culture” is so apt, and your closing couplet is a triumph. Very well done indeed!

    I love everything about “Pink Flamingos”. Again, you paint a tangible and beautiful scene using that wonderful form… but more than that I love that smile in the face of the inevitable – those symbolic pink flamingos, that celebration of a new beginning – flamboyant, free and joyful. Great stuff!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so very much, Susan, for your appreciation and your detailed analysis of the language of this poem. Your poetry for me is the gold standard of word choice and application of poetic devices so when you approvingly delve this deeply into “the linguistic picture” I can start to think that I’ve done something right! Thank you especially for pointing out “the ever-present danger lurking amid the beauty” for that’s an aspect of this poem’s setting that especially intrigues me — the serene beauty is fraught with danger, both tangible and spiritual1 I have never been to your part of Texas but it pleases to think that you also enjoy spots of wild beauty on the plains just on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico!

      Thank you also for your kind words about Pink Flamingos. It is an intriguing form which I had thought of as Frostian but now know it is far more general. I will certainly attempt more poetry in this enjoyable form in the future! And I’m very respectful of that “smile in the face of the inevitable” which you point out. It makes me think of the Serenity Prayer — “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” A meaningful application of this prayer in my life is what I always aspire to. I think my speaker in Flamingos is the same.

      Thank you again, Susan! Your generous words always mean a lot to me.

      Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Yael! I’m very grateful for your reading and commenting and especially glad that these were poems you enjoyed!

      Reply
  14. Joshua C. Frank

    I enjoyed these poems inspired by your move to Florida.

    “Spanish Moss” really brings home the fact that Florida is part of the South… we never really think of it that way. It’s as if people outside the South think of Florida as its own region. I never thought about plantations having been there, but I guess it makes sense. I remember well the part about the North Star and the moon from having lived in Texas at about the same latitude as Jacksonville.

    “Pink Flamingos” is a fun one, especially in the rubaiyat form. I’ve used that form, so I know how challenging it can be… but it fits the subject somehow.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Josh! You’re so right — Florida is part of the South and yet it is a world apart. During the Civil War there were very few engagements here because it was so low in population. And its history was quite different — it was Spanish (with a couple of hiccups) until ceded to the U.S. in 1821. Plus, its climate is more tropical than other parts of the South. Nonetheless, it was a slave state which joined the Confederacy. And there were plantations. We live only a few miles from the antebellum Gamble Plantation, which is now a historic state park.

      Thank you also for the kind words about Pink Flamingos. It’s actually a personal favorite of mine.

      Reply

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