Florida

Only the poor know Florida.
The golden-hour lake is
the Negro fishermen’s,
hunched on their buckets.
Mullet for supper.
Talk like soft rain.

Gator backs in the amethyst
triangles, stepping stones
to the far pines.
Cranes share the dead
branches, buzzards
east,
the other west.
Moss flows
in the great trees.
The breeze, the breeze.

Here is a snakeskin,
torn on a twig.
A glittery veil,
it flutters
among the trash.
This bride slid off
into predator skin,
too quick for your
forked stick.
Her escape is my own,
her wriggle and glide
into wild,
from home.

I do not mourn
my citrus millions.
Where the water comes
up to the muck,
there we walk.
I wear your cap.
It smells like sweat.
The water is moving
the grasses.
Hawks swoop and cry.
Calusa built
coastal mounds of
mussel shells, but all
I find are their fragments,
no empire.

Some tracks
you show me—
a painter cat
passed here.
His prints
in slime
show his shape,
though he’s gone.
What he’s painted
is absence, a footprint
your big boot
can more than fill.
Soft currents of air
smell like mud,
Gulf Stream of flamingo clouds
in evening’s bright lagoon.
Light steps on the water
in every direction.

Florida is minor heaven.
I do not miss my Cuban yacht,
coquina walls, or daiquiris.
We looked for snakes
in the weeds, spiders,
toads. I don’t want more.
Every hour on your lake
is worth a thousand Disney Worlds.

And now, it’s evening.
All over this North Florida county,
men in mirrored
shades like yours
are parking trucks
in lots of bars
called things like Tackle Box.
Gun shops are locking
doors for the night,
snake handlers wailing
in raw plank churches, and
Negroes are trundling home
through the palms,
lugging buckets of
little, bright
fish.

December 2007