The mud snapper flaps through the downward streaming water,

underground river, and in darkness, until it finds a shady home,

there, it sleeps at the edge, with ease to find the air.

 

Raymond finds that the storm changed the creek bed,

and that it now, clearly, is not a tributary to another

body of water.  In fact, the water is all dammed up

behind what appears to be a bank of moss.

Into this, whatever flowing water there enters.

And whereas he formerly thought it would gurgle

its way into the larger stream through soil saturation,

he now perceives that the moss of the bank that has

arisen, since the storm, is actively doing something

with it to cause flow in a certain direction.  For one thing,

as he stands upon the bank, it begins to seem

less a bank and more an organic whole.  His feet

begin to sink into it, it’s clear, if he continues to stand,

that he will begin to slowly sink into whatever hole

it conceals, he steps to the far bank, which, strangely,

no longer exists, and looks back and cannot see anyway

across.  So, he climbs to the other side, only to find

the higher ground will give way beneath his feet,

and is, in fact, hollow.  And now, he is running, trying

to find his way back to the last point of solid ground,

where he stood before making the decision to cross.