What could be worse 
than its body 
inching out of the dark stuff

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? 
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air—
an armful of white blossoms,

  and that’s how I almost died
     of foolishness
        in beautiful Florida.

nothing that you can hear
but the cold creek moving
over the old pebbles