Mangroves

How do you survive         in the mangrove swamps -         amid the twitchings of fetid water         & 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 is 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 eyes -         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 the two legged form coming,         searching . . . a spectre on hind quarters with a bolo knife stepping         free of that beaded circle, the inner camp.