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