If you catch a gleam between pad stalks
or a gleam among river trash bogged in the scum of algae,
cut the outboard and drift,
fix your spotlight on the eye’s red shining.
Through the dark it will come to you
like a red reflector on the edge of a dock
where there is nothing like a dock,
only pads and algae, and the endless drift of the Wakulla
washing slowly under.
Ease toward it on that drift,
your light fixed on the eye’s bright circle.
And if you approach as a part of this river, give over
to your truest self, something
washed down like all things washed toward the gulf,
the reflector will hold above the surface of the river,
and you will see in its deep, red shining
the reptile that moves beneath you.
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