Cohabitation

For the mangrove to form, water must move
slowly, its patience merging sediments, tangling
roots into forest, so shrubs and trees,
like circus stilt walkers, sway atop
the watery surface, and vertical branches
form flowered-finger networks,
nature’s prophecy. How else can police
in the Sundarbans’ plush canopies, its acres
and acres of undergrowth, make out
the poachers they will slaughter in an old-
fashioned, ecosystem raid, tear gassing
until rifles bleed bodies onto the tigers’
black rings, all inside a coastline stabilizing,
sheltering fish, organisms, species,
a shared legacy,
the floating skin.

Author of the article

Amy Lerman was born and raised on Miami Beach, moved to the Midwest for many years, and now lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert, so all three landscapes figure prominently into her writing. She is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College; her chapbook, Orbital Debris, won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest; and her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Midwest Review, I-70 Review, Broad River Review, Radar Poetry, The Good Life Review, HeartWood, Rattle, Slippery Elm, Euphony, and other publications.