When I was a child, we lived a mile from the bayou My parents hard working the dry August ground The kids 'cross the road said, "we're going to the bayou Where there's water that moves without making a sound" There's a spirit covers a bayou, a surface, quiet and calm Slow, dark, vertigo water, swallow me, feed me, float me to a land The mansion arose above the brown of the prairie White, wooden, and silent 'tween the bayou and me A hot dusty wind moves through motionless porches An empty swing creaks at the touch of the breeze Slow, dark, vertigo water, swallow me, feed me, float me to a land The rowboat afloat like a log in the noonlight Turtles were breathing, a snake jerked and swam Alone on the banks following coon tracks To the edge of a sandbar and the shell of a clam