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Prayer for the Everglades
A gumbo-limbo swoons in the arms of an oak.
A royal palm, smooth as sunless skin, rises
against blue. In this whole untouched world
there seems only wind, the grass, and us.
Now silent lines of wood storks appear,
their white wings edged black. Here is
a mathematical question for your evenings.
How many moments like this make a life?
But if it were not true? What if the glades
were a dream, ancient, written on the walls
of caves, so anthropologists peering into
the darkness could say only, it must have
been lovely then, when grass flowed under
the sun like a young woman's falling hair.
What if none of it were true? What if
you and I walked all our afternoons under
smoke, and never saw beyond? What if
the tiny algae that velvet the water, the
gators that pile like lizards on the banks,
the ibis with her sweet curved bill? What if
the turtles that plop off their logs like little
jokes? What if the sheltering mangroves?
Oh what if? Look up, friend, and take my
hand. What if the wood storks were gone?
*
Seven Turtles
On the Withlachoochee last Saturday,
seven turtles in graduated sizes queued
on a log, routine as the osprey nests,
empty this time of year, normal as
the occasional alligator, its blunt nose
and hooded eyes half-submerged,
as are most fears most of the time,
until a plane slams into a building
or a son can't be found. We are
spoiled, you and I, guilty of
saying of the good dark bread
on our plates not, how delicious,
but where's the rest. And so
with the osprey nests, the turtles,
even the palms leaning so low
they parallel the water. But now
a wood stork crosses our bow.
And another. And when we
look left, where river-flow
complicates into cypress creek,
we see it: hundreds of wood storks
with their black-edged wings,
hunched like priests in the trees.
And I remember that morning
in Cairo, years ago, when the veiled
figure next to me, on the side of
the aisle that was all women,
turned, and took my western hands
in hers as if my fingers might
be breakable, as if she loved them,
and said, in the only language
we both understood: Pass this on.
*
Minnows
The squared shade of water under the dock
is like the most elaborate brooch that ever
quivered silver. The open pond is its dress,
floor-length and flowing after the rain. And
now through the long folds the sun touches
skin, the sand of which we are made, under
which who can say what we may be thinking:
We are young? We will not be young again?
The pond has as many names as a boy gives
the constellations, which surge in great arcs
over his head, long after the last couple has
bowed deeply, each to each, and left the floor.
*
Green and Variations
The young satsuma leaves believe they will love their twigs
forever, will never harden into them,
like old women in bitter dresses.
Look at us, the wild garlics purr, see the latest
from the ditches, as they twitch their slender
hips in the wind.
The smilax emerges straight, with a tender mane.
As he grows heavier, he will turn feral
and gallop between the trees.
The sweetgums are waving their hands in the air
like kindergarteners. Teacher Spring leans forward.
They are all in love with her.
They dream she smoothes their branches as if
they were bedclothes, those long, rustling
evenings after school.
*
FIVE SMALL SKETCHES
i
Moment
When the sun has gone behind the hills
a doe comes to grass. Her fawn follows.
Their two coats shine, lanterns in the dusk.
ii
Naptime
The hollows of the rise show
beneath the green blanket.
My hand wants to stroke
her tender hip, wake her gently.
iii
The Bare Trees Consider Leaves
Why should they want them?
This is who they really are.
No false gestures. Not afraid.
iv
Traffic
The stream must hurry to the bottom
of the hill. Behind her, the rain
flows fast, honking his horn.
v
Two Hungers
A robin pulls the protesting worm.
Why did it crawl towards the light
on the surface of the lawn?
*
The Gopher Tortoise
There is no room in this country for anything slow.
No room for anything that digs its hole
and refuses to move.
Get out, we tell it, dragging it up backwards. We
force it out with gasoline. We boil it live
in its shell
which is horny and yellowed like old toenails. The wrinkled
flesh around its claws is tough. Its nose is hooked
like a Jew's.
When attacked it thinks only to back away. Or it takes
refuge in its carapace which can be cracked wide
with a hammer.
There is no room in this country for anything so easily
killed. And we're proud of that. We fly it
like a flag.
*
The Florida Panther
Something flashes across the evening road.
We see its streaming tail.
We find its tracks - huge clovers in
the drifted sand--
and call the scientists. We thought
you'd like to know,
we tell them. There are panthers
in Alachua County.
And they laugh. The panthers died out
years ago they say,
this far north. But what I'd ask is
how they know.
Have they never looked into something's
yellow eyes?
Have they never heard twigs breaking,
far on the deep
woods floor? Is there no sound
they can not explain?
*
The Hawk
Every afternoon as I slide around the sandy curve, he sails
across my bow, beautiful as an evening purse, each wing
perfectly speckled, each dip and rise an arc I could spend
a life naming.
He lives in the tangled depths of sweetgum and swamp magnolia,
and flies always to the field, where live oaks spread
their branches to the grass like mothers laying
their children
down to sleep. And he comes out hungry this time of day,
to spiral into the violet air. And lately, I have
become aware
of my bald self, how it beats as it scuttles for its burrow.
But you, my love. What is the meaning of your face
at the pointed edge
of my sight? What is this circling?
*
Belling
The owls' sobs overlap, as if the beginning of weeping is so profound as to summon
its sister from across the trees.
In the black night, the owls are touchstones. Deep in our rumpled bed, we lie listening.
You remember
the grandfather who made you kites, and how, when he died, you lost your only parent.
I think of
how easily I've betrayed you, over and again for poetry, Sheets of moonlight fall across us.
In a city
thousands of miles from here, a woman is overcome by the shining bay. She hunches,
her head in her wet hands.
*
Night Watch on the Arbacia
It is not the darkened sea we fear
but freighters that can tip us casually
on our sides, or bright-lit liners that can
nudge us down until we become not
dry men but bobbing lights in a wake.
So when I saw the glow at the horizon
which, approaching, did not turn away,
you will understand why I called
the crew from their bunks. They
stumbled up on deck and, hearts
thudding, we watched it surge closer
despite our swingings of the wheel.
Until, like skeptics looking finally into
love's face, we realized what it was.
And it was the moon, the moon.
*
The Sandhill Cranes
The blue air fills with cries
The cranes are streams, rivers.
They danced on the night prairie,
leapt at each other, quivering.
The long bones of sand-hill cranes
know their next pond. Not us.
When something is too beautiful,
we do not understand to leave.
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