Christopher Martin
Second Coming on South Cobb Drive
This great blue heron is in rebellion
of what I expect it should be.
It does not stand in grandeur;
rather, it hunches like a weary man,
waits in the water of a drainage ditch
filled with car parts, branches, beer cans
beside a shack, rims and road signs
nailed to rotting boards by South Cobb Drive.
Soon the heron lifts like a plastic bag
caught in an updraft, ascends over my car,
over the highway, one with sky and smog
set against the slopes of Kennesaw Mountain,
a ridgeline scaling pawn shops, porn stores, fast food.
The great bird settles in a concrete streambed
that carves an apartment complex, watches the water
for movement, for life, as traffic slouches north.
Christopher Martin is the author of the poetry chapbook A Conference of Birds (New Native Press 2012). Chris’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shambhala Sun, Poecology, Ruminate Magazine, Drafthorse, Still: The Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Adventum, Loose Change Magazine, and Revolution House, among other places. His poems “Revelation on the Cherokee County Line” and “Antidote to Narcissus” were recently selected to appear in the Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, due out fall 2012 with Texas Review Press. Chris is the founding editor of Flycatcher and is a contributing editor at New Southerner, where he writes the monthly blog Kairos and Crisis. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University, and lives with his wife and their two young children in the northwest Georgia piedmont, between the Allatoona Range and Kennesaw Mountain. His website is www.christopher-martin.net.
Return to November 2012 Edition
This great blue heron is in rebellion
of what I expect it should be.
It does not stand in grandeur;
rather, it hunches like a weary man,
waits in the water of a drainage ditch
filled with car parts, branches, beer cans
beside a shack, rims and road signs
nailed to rotting boards by South Cobb Drive.
Soon the heron lifts like a plastic bag
caught in an updraft, ascends over my car,
over the highway, one with sky and smog
set against the slopes of Kennesaw Mountain,
a ridgeline scaling pawn shops, porn stores, fast food.
The great bird settles in a concrete streambed
that carves an apartment complex, watches the water
for movement, for life, as traffic slouches north.
Christopher Martin is the author of the poetry chapbook A Conference of Birds (New Native Press 2012). Chris’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shambhala Sun, Poecology, Ruminate Magazine, Drafthorse, Still: The Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Adventum, Loose Change Magazine, and Revolution House, among other places. His poems “Revelation on the Cherokee County Line” and “Antidote to Narcissus” were recently selected to appear in the Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, due out fall 2012 with Texas Review Press. Chris is the founding editor of Flycatcher and is a contributing editor at New Southerner, where he writes the monthly blog Kairos and Crisis. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University, and lives with his wife and their two young children in the northwest Georgia piedmont, between the Allatoona Range and Kennesaw Mountain. His website is www.christopher-martin.net.
Return to November 2012 Edition