If we'd met in the swamp, it would have been different Our black eyes transparent, our home base a high bat's nest stuffed in the chest of an arthritic cypress named for a one-eyed chief, and several of his descendents. Flowering water is the muck of our breakfasts. We ease ourselves, we slip into a sweet, a mosquito bath drawn from waters we don't dare drain. Oh man, I don't like the sound of that thunder. Gator jaws are beautiful, like a gum-tree raft. What is "natural"? What is "good" in a forest, tucked under water? Cypress knees rise up from nowhere, on fire, the light making coals of a root's reflection. What is all this nonsense? We have swamps on our conscience, like a lie that returns to the edge of our dreams, laughing much louder than our swimming fists. We are caught in a swamp storm, out on the boardwalk, the sky falls toward us with each cracking branch. The cypress have lived here so long in this silent buzz, they talk of our dumb luck, they make us feel good, as if we were already the past.