Congaree Crush
"She is like possumhaw or sweetgum." Poetry by Hailey Williams
![Congaree Crush](/content/images/size/w1200/2023/04/178c49_c9630b608e914e72a74dfd6f38daf155_mv2.webp)
by Hailey Williams
She is like possumhaw or sweetgum: panacea
in concealment, plays at languor, crescive
even in black waters. She is champion loblolly,
300 years, tucked away, southern rains.
She is unconscionable. I could be:
lightening bug (Morse-code in her ears),
banana spider (on string diaphanous, my web
floodplained glass in her chapeled arms).
To see her as she is, you need wings. I want to
water-stride aloft meniscuses
rising round roots. I am neither bat
snug on her throat nor lissome zephyr
nursing curls of hair. Not toe-pink salamander,
not oxbow lake. I am no great occlusion and
cannot fathom what it is to be a warbler
housed in her knees each spring. I can only say
as she breathes the same sky,
this moment I hold her in my lungs.