The Slow People of the Swamp

The boats hang nestled against the dock,

motionless, still-born children

waiting for morning and motion.

I am still, ears pressed against the weedy mouth of the swamp,

following the speech of cypress

and the slap of gator tail

A light illumines a shape sliding down the bayou,

and by the measured creak of the oarlocks

I recognize it as human,

one of those who lives within,

one of the slow dumb folk they call the swamp rats.

His muscles and breath

move as his people have always moved through the swamp,

effortlessly, one with the secretive eyes of the racoon

and the slither of water moccasins.

Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day,

they shall drain this stretch of swamp,

big men with ugly machines

who will uproot the trees and tear away the green veil of vines.

But that is tomorrow.

Tonight I shall listen to the swamp and its kin,

and wish to know what the slow dumb folk know.