Water vapor rises off the sea. Drawn over the warm mass of land, it forms high towers of cloud, white and gray and black and orange. Lightning strokes climb the cloud towers; rains pour.

     Old channels dug by man disappear under the rising stream as the river flows south, swollen with its new water. Lake Okeechobee takes in the river, then swarms over its boundaries, where dikes once restrained its flood.

     Silver sheets sweep across the sea of grass. Herons flap their wings and poke with sharp bills at silvery shapes just under the water’s surface; the birds raise their heads and swallow down the fish with a brisk shiver. Alligators slide from mud banks with quick carnivorous intent.

     Here fields once were tilled, planted, and soaked with chemical fertilizer that ran into the rivers and canals along with the pesticides and detergent scum. No more. Sawgrass and weed and dock and all steaming uncut profusion stir in the water and the heat. Life teems in the flood, none of it human.

     At the ocean’s edge, gulls scream overhead. A turtle moves slowly, unmolested across hot sand. All along the silent coastal canals, egrets stand like placid sentinels against an enemy they know will not return.