Swamp

There is more here than mist, duckweed and spatterdocks. A bowfin, three-feet long, lurks amid the stalks of cattails, preying on a school of yellow bass. A pickerel prowls amid brown tamaracks and grass. A snapper with musket shot still lodged inside its tail, devours a bloated frog, exposing only its shell. And at the water’s edge, a towering black gum, old as the liberty bell, watches deaf and dumb. Its leaves soon will turn red for the three hundredth autumn: a leaf for every brave buried at the bottom.