Feeding Alligators
Houma, Louisiana
The alligators, no longer wary,
draw near our boat. Slithering snouts
slice the surface in languid sine-waves
looking for pole-dangled meat
transforming predator into circus performer,
rising out of water on tails
to snatch the prize teasingly out of reach
to please the two-hour swamp boat tourists
poised with phones and waiting their turn
to feel raw alligator jaw power vibrate
up the feeding stick, and is this reminiscent
of the dangling carrots held out by
the European settlers using exchange
meat-pole adroitly to take advantage
of the Houma people who survived by quietly
slipping with reptilian coolness into
the bayou swamps and waterways,
leaving farming lands far behind
for the docked boat-people, bedecked with ambition
and home-grown diseases, backed by the treaties
of far-away kings, whose Boucher-forged
imaginings of monster hunts
formed their vision of legacy:
conquest either by reward or threat,
delivering dreams or the worst of fears
by the ruthless ambush or by crocodile tears.