Crocodile

“What,” I asked fearfully
pointing one quavering infant
digit, “are those, crocodile?”
He snickered in reply, “No.”

I remember them still
almost perfectly preserved
in motionless backwater
memory, dark mostly

submerged bodies paddling
noiselessly past. “Timber,”
he whispered in my ear,
“a home demolished by flood

or cracked by thunder
clouds and twister. The river’s
just cleaning up the mess.”
No circumspection,

just observation without dwelling
on what parallel course we
might be traveling afloat
with reptilian messengers.