Found poetry: Okavango

This passage from an article in Smithsonian Magazine just presented itself as a poem when I read it this morning. The article, “Into the Okavango Delta,” by Paul Theroux, is beautifully written, haunting and lyrical, and accompanied by lovely photographs. (Smithsonian, April 2013, p. 81)

On safari

past the cushions and the lounge
chairs, beyond the rails of the wide
platform, the lagoon on this reach of

the Okavango was dark and depthless-
seeming, in shadow as the sun set
behind it, but the slanting sun gilded

the reeds of the marsh and glittered
on the boughs of the acacia trees on what
looked like floating islands in the distance

– Paul Theroux, “Into the Okavango Delta,” Smithsonian, April 2013, p. 81