» Poetry

Two Poems on Florida

Hurricane

Naked, floating face down in the tv room
filled with seawater seeping from glass doors
he had duct-taped against the hurricane,
the room a dark aquarium, his white body, bobbing
—he must have been asleep on the couch, exhausted
after a day of battening down the house
when baysurge beached in a swarm of seaspouts
churning up the mangrove swamp, the great wave colliding,
breaching doors, collapsing walls, wallowing, then
tumbling back out as winds shrieked off treetops,
sea slosh sucking up drowned frogs, broken snakes,
skinned pelicans, dragging leaf muck, sparkles of
shattered glass, lawn chairs, rolling a dead manatee,
slopping back through tangles of trees, impaled boats,
to the seesaw bay sizzling with rain, leaving him
rocking in a kelp of curtains, arms outstretched
towards something in the green cloudy water.

A Miami Moment

Just home from work, he’s sitting
by the patio pond, watching the koi
write their slow signatures.

Beside him: The Miami Herald 
gathering humid air, a glass of wine,
and the cigar he left last night.

A flock of parrots mutters
in the seagrape tree. The ylang-ylang
has put on its evening perfume

and soon the yard will smell like Chanel.
Inside his daughter is baking cookies
and his wife is taking a pre-dinner snooze.

He jumps up screaming.
Inside, they yell “What? What!?”
and run out to see him pointing up

at maybe fifty vultures circling,
wings underlit by the setting sun
in a swirl of slow turning light.

The magic in the realism
never far away.