every mile, down tidal rivers weaving death with clotted silt, in the cottonmouths that swim thru marshes lush with a tyrant's will to flourish, hunger in a sky that swallows wings and islands, in gators rattling a century's eyeteeth in their bellies,

hunger for a daybreak, for a seacoast, for brackish winds engorged with the smell of lust on Tethys' breath, hunger in the swish of palm leaves along a boulevard whose lazy susurrations gather dreams about them as a shepherdess tends her flock,

hunger out of boredom, out of emptiness, out of failed expectations, peace-less and demoralized, choked with half-truths and stumbling drunk in shoes of wisdom three sizes too big,

but still hungry for a morning spread with the chill of sand and tepid breezes, for an olive-green hypnosis, for the level, steady engines of the rolling surf,

hungry for the year's first swim.

brododactylos Eôs,
I come:
fill my canvas.

Notes:
(1) The locale is the Georgia coast.
(2) Brododactylos Eôs: from Homer, his well-known epithet, the 'rosy-fingered Dawn.'