title: The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)
author:  Cecily Parks 
description: <b>CECILY PARKS</b> is an award-winning poet and scholar, author of three books of poetry, and Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Texas State University.
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00256.jpeg)
  
  **RED GRASS RIVER**
  
   _ **A LEGEND**_
  
   **James Carlos Blake**
  
   **For**  
   **Len Richardson**  
   **a good old boy and damn fine man** …
  
   **and**  
   **the coterie of my Bowling Green days:**  
   **Fare ye well, gents and ladies, each and all**.
  
  >  _As for man, his days are as grass: as a_  
  >  _flower of the field, so he flourisheth_.
  
  >  _For the wind passeth over it, and it is_  
  >  _gone; and the place thereof shall know it_  
  >  _no more_.
  
  > > > > — _Psalms, 103:15_
  
    
  
  >  _The terrible thing is, everyone has his reasons_.
  
  > > > > — _Jean Renoir_
  
   **CONTENTS**
  
   **EPIGRAPH**
  
   **AUTHOR’S NOTE**
  
   **PROLOGUE**
  
  IF THE DEVIL EVER RAISED A GARDEN THE EVERGLADES WAS…
  
    
  
   **ONE**
  
  THE BOY POLED THE SKIFF ALONG THE WINDING SAWGRASS CHANNEL…
  
   **TWO**
  
  SHE WAS A BOBHAIRED SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD BLONDE WITH FULL breasts and…
  
   **THREE**
  
  FOLLOWING HIS RELEASE FROM THE PALM BEACH COUNTY JAIL he…
  
   **FOUR**
  
  OLD JOE ASHLEY’S DADDY COME TO FLORIDA AS A YOUNG MA