At the edge of the marshes the cattails leaped with frogs.
One of us found twinted on a sedge a tiny green snake,
a vigor of grassy light burning its slow way out,
picked it up, let it coil on her palm,
wave its head, flicker its coral tongue -
carried it so for a while until it grew frightened,
tensed and gave off for a small thing
a remarkable, high-flavored reek. She flung it away,
and none of use ever could find it again,
though we kept on the lookout. Then, deeper,
the marsh smell began, the air clean enough
until we stirred up the mud, slogging through
to the blinds, our trails filling in
with a fetid thickness of oozes, only the pale
swath of bent reeds to show how we'd come.
The lake leached in from beneath. Where we walked
was something less earth than water, swelling
with bubbles that burst through the duckweed and cress
our faces at intervals swept with clean stony gusts
from the open lake. The mallows were springy
with redwings. Everywhere flashed green bolts
of dragonflies, snakes and turtles cruised
the channels, feathers of mud braided lakeward. At dawn
came the ducks, the sky awash to the feathery roots
of its undersoils - mallard and canvasback,
teal swung in to the blinds, or flared
on some sheen of the wind. In the marshes at Suamico,
watchful, we felt the world borne down
by its own abundances. Wherever we broke
through the pursy earth there billowed about us a quick
exhalation of soils, a rich recognizable stink,
while over us there is the dawn shone the bird-ridden sky.
~ John Engels
