Black waters swirl around my face,
Muddy vortices twirl backwards,
Down the length of my submerged body.
The still surface of the ebony river before me is an obsidian mirror. In the dark looking glass I see the reflected shafts of great grey tree trunks rising into the vertiginous verdancy of the forest canopy. The mottled marble columns rise into the fantasmic vault of a glowing green cathedral. I glide over unseen submerged tangles of fallen timber, I slide past banks of bubbling primordial ooze. the heavy humid air of the mangrove swamp is fragrant with the smell of decay. In my wake, eddies of mocha creme dance in the dark chocolate channel. I have returned to where some Precambrian ancestor flopped up onto wet land. I am swimming back to the ancient sea. Moonless night black mud coats my skin and cakes my hair as I swim forward. Unseen residents of the winding channel ripple the surface of the dark water around me. Thousands of miles from my home, I am even further from the world of concrete sidewalks and manicured lawns I grew up in.