From up near the clouds, the landscape
is a camouflage, green and brown
belying abundant life beneath
the surface of shallow water.
The airboat I boarded yesterday
rode on a mere eight inches,
swished through tall grass, snaked
around shrubs in search of quarry.
Visitors to the Everglades long
for one thing: to see something wild.
Ear plugs in place, we peer frantically
at the tame horizon, watch herons
rise calmly in hazy air, turtles
slide softly into deeper mud.
Locating at last a basking alligator
on a sunny hammock, we are startled
to realize we are the wildlife:
interlopers who, like the elusive
python, are liable to strangle
the life we seek.
Sherry Poff
Sherry Poff writes in and around Ooltewah, Tennessee. She holds an M.A. in writing from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is a member of the Chattanooga Writers' Guild. Her poems have appeared recently in Valiant Scribe, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel.
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