Where want has ended
communities are gated, the sprawl
broken by box store malls, all of it
floating seven feet above sea level.
Spotless streets corsaged with palms,
the mostly vacant homes
house screened-in pools
off the back instead of yards.
Safe.
Not safe, but having purchased
a sense of security. We imagine
nothing but what surrounds us here.
Ensconced,
we steam in the hot tub
like sausages in our natural casings.
◊
A bald eagle steals an osprey’s prey
mid-flight.
Snowy egrets dodge past barefoot
waiters toward the seltzered surf
like waiters without arms or trays.
The sun snaps one second into the next,
puzzle-piece perfect and clean
as our margarita ice.
A certain order finds its way.
If we see dolphins today
the fit will feel even closer.
◊
Jimmy Buffett calms the nerves
of the German woman buying
swim trunks for her nervous son.
Masticating is chewing. Expectorating
is spitting, and a crime. I don’t know why
these mannerisms come to mind
while nature extends such courtesies
to us in its decline.
The outlet is a well-turned-out buffet.
Nictitating also feels important
to the moment. The vast air-conditioned
aisles quietly filling with it.
◊
Among the manatees and alligators
tangling in the Everglades,
beyond the walls of the enclosure,
something terrible is happening,
the likes of which we’d rather not see.
Sounds we’d rather not hear.
The ranger reloads his camera,
unaccustomed to this dilemma.
◊
Nightly self-policed, each encoded house
a curfew of sleeping couples
transparent to one another
as they can let themselves be,
truthful as strangers asking for directions.
Loss, regret, distress, all the anonymous
murdered selves relax on their nocturnal faces.
Tomorrow’s forecast, like every other,
is what they are going to expect.
◊
The humidity is primitive: a florid stink of
ripe vegetable and camouflaged lairs.
Memory is dampened to a whiff
then masked by chlorinated pools,
barbecues, bourbon,
the new time of children.
We remember nothing but
what surrounds us.
◊
On the white-sand beach,
stark cherubs and tanned bathers
step haltingly into the sea
as if afraid they’re returning
somewhere happily forgotten.
I wish I could describe it to you
with the big, wholesome metaphor of music:
these healthy buoyant tourists,
how the decorated yuccas and pastel
condominiums simply drain away
when the ocean’s brilliant flag
swells in the outcast eye.