By the Banks of the Daintree River North Queensland, Australia

Crocodilus, as in
it might sense your shadow, or, worse,
the flesh of you. It might
pull the enormous stone of itself
out of the brown waters
into the flash of air; jaw you,
roll you down, drown you
without contest.

You, who never thought
you would “go out” this way,
to be snouted deep into a river’s
rocks and branches and silty leafage,
fed on for days.
To be nothing

but fodder, you, who believed in science,
progress, your body
below the sterilized implements of medical students;
you who signed the donor card,
imagining your heart somewhere
still beating; even you
who wished to be tucked in the earth
like a root vegetable, to leave
seepage and grass.

Not these bones—
monkey? fawn? boy? —
clanking together like rocks in the shaker of tide.
Who would have guessed
they would give you up so easily—
your loves, your questions,
even your most delicate stance,
like a pied stilt in low water.