Mangroves

    How do you survive
    in the mangrove swamps -
    amid the twitchings of foetid water
    & lice thick as baby tears?

    How, with all the wallow of thick muck
    making suction noises and the teams in
    relays
    searching nightly with baited hounds,
    do you pull free?

    Your bamboo pole knows every ploy
    but a slender craft ill-equipped
    to sparring blows from every quarter
    the undergrowth necessitates.

    The closeness of the clammy night
    heaved about like so much rotting
    fruit will draw
    the ants ... devouring like that
    abundance of cold yellow eye -
    the firefly swarms that mock your
    heavy steel machete arm.

    Across the drift of darkness
    and the insect life
    you bat in swarms,
    the ultimate danger is not in the
    cayman giant
    or his reptilian cousin named of
    copper wire,
    the anaconda, or even mindless holes,
    thick black
    ooze that throttles a victim ... but
    two legged form coming,
    searching ... a spectre on hind quarters
    with a bolo knife stepping
    free of that beaded circle, the inner
    camp.