Cottongrass

Cottongrass

When the fifth season comes, dressed in flames and smoke,
the cottongrass bloom
waving wild heads like umbrellas.

Have you seen them? They think of nothing else
as if each stem were a prayer
their damp feet, believers,

tirelessly searching the shrinking swamps
for the earthen spines of stones
that, like hymnals, crack open

spilling a light that still hums
of the sea.