In the still summer swamp a cypress knee’s
a mountain. Behind the patient transparent lid

of danger there is not a single smooth straight
line on two hundred million years of hide.

*

On the hill I dump more March snow
behind my truck into a pile impenetrable as Everest

without a Sherpa. The uneven humps
of buried cars stretch ahead: back of a giant alligator,

danger lies silent on the surface of the road.