The
live oak
that
once marshaled
a
cluster of pine, stands
stripped
of its green medals,
a
defeated general,
when
the winds how
how,
howled, how could,
how
could this happen?
A
pillow of clouds
over
Homestead, pillaged
by
the atomic hurl of sand,
ripped
young beards
of
Spanish Moss from orphaned
saplings'
struggle against
the
blast of sea spray,
tore
tiles from the tarred
underbelly
of roof's
pried
corners, corneas
of
windows, filled
our
small house
with
the breath of god
until
the walls gave
in
a thrust of wind
in
the senseless stutter of stone
that
seeps into the lap
of
the Everglades; mangroves
laden
with sap, surrendered
torn
flags to the sawgrass sea's
fist
of blades.
fantasy land
across
the everglades, billboards
with
tanned coppertone babes dot paradise
paved
over by asphalt from alligator alley,
free
from potholes below high tension
voltage
lines and safe by developer's standards,
bedside
canals choked by cane fields
and
fast food diners squeezed
between
nude bars with dancers
old
enough for medicare,
yet
advertise, "girls, girls, girls,"
disney
world, secure on each side,
a
model for urban strategists, looms
along
the interstate, where cartoons
daisy,
minnie, sleeping beauty
all
wonderful and white, are welcome
under
the dome of epcot
and
are forever young
in
a betty boop playground.
alligator alley
i'm
with you, brother, tanning
your
thick leather, coarsened by years
of
drought, beside the caloosahatchee
that
empties names, outlived by america's
hunger
for gold, sugar, youth, into the gulf
where
you lurk, for something careless,
an
innocent doe, or some aimless cane cutter,
to
stir the water, and your eyes will pop
out
of the murky swamp, jaws crunch bones,
then
barely move, secure on your all engorging
stomach,
away from the allosaurus crowded
heartland,
in your knowledge that victor
or
victim is a matter of who tells the story--
for
while other dinosaurs fossilize into oil,
splattered
across the highway, you lumber beside
the
stiff palmettos, waiting for the next aeon to pass.
song to the loas
(for felix morriseau-leroy)
imagine
how these anhingas give themselves
to
the wind, riding the air currents over the canal
as
it turns away from the highway's hum
and
the live oak's acorns falling between palmetto
fronds
and poinciana's fire; or how mullets break
the
surface of the water in their singular joy
that
makes them one with the air; so do i hope,
when
my body flames with the crotons, my nāme
with
the roots of the banyan, my little good angel,
held
in faded, photo albums and remembered years
later
in a libation, and my star of destiny settles into its
constellation,
my great good angel will find peace in ginen
meditation on snake creek
fog
billows over the troubled face of the canal;
a
quilt of clouds, torn by a stand of pines, a tangle
of
cumulus stuck in their needles, stretches over the hot
road
rising in the east to the reeb of mallards strutting
over
imaginary property lines of fulford- by-the-sea--
neighbors
with new silverware and noise--down streets
with
names as provisional as the ones we give ourselves,
behind
houses swollen as the frayed textbooks
that
line my shelves; while overhead in the frigid wind
from
the west, past hassidic women, power-walking,
checking
each other's pulse as if they weren't going to live
forever,
a kestrel circles rat snakes through the everglades,
sand
skitters over the page into the next millennium,
a
stream that quenched ponce's thirst, washed mud
from
the hair of tequesta, pours over my crown, neck,
chest,
feet-- the hard portions—and into the sap of the mangrove
snake creek elegies
the
x where we now live, the marked cross hairs
where
any day now i expect to see coyote, brer rabbit,
or
eshu with his famous hat strolling down the street,
a
real cocksman, to stir up troubles with my neighbors.
but
i 'm ready for him now; i've lived to have my store
of
tricks and spells to ward him off--except the answer
to
the prank he played on the former owners
who've
left the mezuzah hanging over the door.
ii
this
royal poinciana whose branches hover
over
my studio, like a forgotten ancestor,
was
planted by some cracker, now a statistic
of
white flight from dade county, afraid
of
what miami has become, a muddle
of
races, dark as the canal that runs
behind
the houses, that separates goyim
from
hassidim, and undermines foundations
of
the playground, sprouted its stem through deep
wounds
in the limestone, like the web of highways
that
left overtown homeless; put out its first buds,
smothered
by ash from the names mcduffie
and
lozano; blooms every juneteenth through august
after
andrew's baptism of homestead,
and
has grown down from the sky, giving way to the tug
of
gravity, still holding its fire against white clouds,
admitting
itself to be a part of the landscape, despite
twisted
limbs, and giving shade to my brown children
iii
down
by the bridge, water moccasins slither
through
bracken and beer bottles like the advent
of
a nightmare--no wonder the ancient
egyptians
cowered before snakes--masters
of
eternity whose fatal bite sent the victim, unaided,
to
face maat and thoth, the ibis headed god, whose beak
balanced
a feather over maat's jaws, then weighed
the
victim's heart--a life swollen with fear--
only
to be swallowed by maat's brothers waiting in the dark.
iv
under
the murky water, tarpons,
with
beards made from rusted hooks,
silver
glimmering in the grasses and reeds,
drawn
there as naturally as those middle-aged lovers,
parked
in a black mustang every noon at the foot
of
the bridge, regular as the tide--while her husband's
at
work, and he's taken a lunch break from the office --
they
undress each other and obey a pull greater
than
their promises; or those kids at dusk,
at
the roots of the flowering dogwood, smoking
buddha,
playing the dozens with dr. dre
or
ice cube as background music, arguing
endlessly
about who’s the better deejay,
like
david, paul, pat, and me, kotched
on
the fence, listening to shakespeare's bass
streaming
out of twin eighteen inch speakers
and
augustus pablo's haunting melodica
darting
between the thrashing guitars
that
strained the tweeter's throat,
until
some cop, like saddlehead,
would
try to sneak up on us,
to
cart us off to jail in bright handcuffs,
but
david would always sense his shadow,
and
before he could tighten his dragnet,
we'd
be off into the night, fluorescent
puma
sweatshirts flashing in the darkness.
v
gray
manatees munch river grass,
anhingas
sun the selves on broken limbs,
and
the muddy path around the lake doubles
like
legba's riddles about opossums.
so
what's left now? like the famous warrior,
his
enemies slain, the kingdom restored,
he
put down his bow, useless now in the real war,
to
rebuild the hearth beyond the beckoning road.
nature walk
to
talk about these trees, lakes, rivers
is
not to be deaf to all the horrors:
a
brother was lynched on this flowering dogwood,
brickell's
skyscrapers cataract with ash from rosewood,
the
suwannee will never wash away the blood
from
these states, and those deserted dirt roads,
inviting
as the drawl of southern belles in leon county,
are
not as innocent as they seem to be.
yet
this river, subversive as its own silt, overruns
its
banks, stirs the rank mud, startles spoonbills, herons
and
manatees in their own element, accepts complicity--
life
feeding on itself--with the yellow pollen of the trees.
smoke screen, tallahassee 1998
the
television snowed, satellites gone awry,
except
for the sure and faithful t.b.n. whose frost
haired
preacher promises fire for sinners
like
me, cursed with the sin of caanan,
too
proud to submit to the gray slate
of
their eyes and too humble to admit the grace
from
a burst of rain that skitters
across
a graveyard of cypresses, barely
enough
to wash blackened limbs blasted
thin
of their barks by summer wildfires' streak
along
alligator alley, then south to the edge
of
the everglades where a heron interrogates
a
snake, and failing, it passes through the hooked
neck,
the paradox we share: the necessity of death,
the
inevitability of love--to a green field
where
my mother has become a live oak, spears
of
st. augustine, beside the smell of wood
smoke
lifting into a sky barred with wisps of cirrus.
florida garden
to
hear the way they tell it,
you'd
think that we didn't have the right
to
stand on this ground, hallowed
by
the blood of all the undone, white
black,
indian, pressed down by the hooves
of
night riders, sprouting like kudzu
around
the lakes of our state, but my mother
and
i own a plot of land in orlando
where
we've planted something older
and
dearer than this cassava root that grips
the
limestone rock and squeezes water
up
the brittle stem, where her grandchildren
play
ring-around-the-roses, and its leaves span
the
southern cross rising above alpha centauri.
everglades litany
(for nadia)
and
blessed be the morning star in the arms of gumbo limbo
blessed
be the sun on the cruciform wings of anhingas
blessed
be the wind where ospreys and black vultures ride
blessed
be zebra butterflies on crowns of tamarind
blessed
be lightning on the spires of royal palms.
blessed
be wildfires that temper berries of the green hawthorn
blessed
be hurricanes that tear at the bark of tallowwood and bay-cedars
blessed
be bracken and wild olives huddled by salt marshes
blessed
be august heat that rasps the throat of morning glories
blessed
be panthers and deer hiding behind a screen of leatherwood
blessed
be brown pelicans grunting in mangroves after thunderstorms
blessed
be the evening star over aisles of magnolias
blessed
be barred owls cooing by swamps and hardwood hammocks
blessed
be june beetles dusting pollen off their backs in the damp air
blessed
be woodstorks and spoonbills wading through resurrection ferns
blessed
be chanterelles, their yellow plumes rising from oak and pine
blessed
be the moon ripening with pond apples on the banks of canals
blessed
be dew and mist, fog and hail, falling on blades of sugar
cane
blessed
be loggerhead turtles lumbering past the thorns of anemones
blessed
be, blessed be all that move, live, and breathe on the edge of these
lakes
blessed
be, blessed be... everything
