The Ebeneezer Cotillion

Cypress Forest along Ebeneezer Creek

 

I spent last week at a church camp at the Ebeneezer Retreat Center near Rincon, Georgia. I led the outdoor activities for the youth, which included taking the middle and high school youth on a canoe trip. While they paddled in the channel, I would often paddle through the cypress to get ahead of some of them. With the water low, some of the cypress trunks reminded me of the broad hoop dresses women wore in the middle of the 19th Century. Cypress also have “knees” which pop up around their trunks, which explains their presence in the poem below. 

 

The Ebeneezer Cotillion

Like a rugrat
I dart between the hoop skirts
of stately maidens-cypress-
bumping into their knees,
zigzagging across the ballroom,
as the top of the trees sway gracefully
in the summer breeze.

 

 

12 Replies to “The Ebeneezer Cotillion”

  1. That’s a beautiful, happy poem. Love the zigzagged-y dance it suggests. I encourage you to write and share more poetry, Sage. It’s a gift of yours.

    1. Sherry, I saw one alligator and one snake (probably a cottonmouth by the way it was swimming). A few of the youth and one adult saw another larger alligator, but that was it. With a large group of youth in the water, it wasn’t likely we’d see a lot of wildlife.

  2. What a fabulous photograph this is.
    I like the poem … not one that I’d read before.

    All the best Jan

  3. I was fascinated by the knees in my first exposure to a swamp a handful years ago when I took an air boat ride through one in Florida. I wouldn’t want to drive anything through a cypress grove with a prop.

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