Florida
The state with the prettiest name,
The state that floats in brackish water,
Held together by mangrave roots
That bear while living oysters in clusters,
And when dead strew white swamps with skeletons,
Dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
Like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass.
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
And unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
Every time in a tantrum.
Tanagers embarrassed by their flashiness,
And pelicans whose delight it is to clown;
Who coast for fun on the strong tidal currents
In and out among the mangrove islands
And stand on the sand-bars drying their damp gold wings
On sun-lit evenings.
Enormous turtles, helpless and mild,
Die and leave their barnacled shells on the beaches,
And their large white skulls with round eye-sockets
Twice the size of a man’s.
The palm trees clatter in the stiff
Like the bills of the pelicans. The tropical rain comes down
To freshen the tide-looped strings of fading shells:
Job’s Tear, the Chinese Alphabet, the scarce Junonia,
Parti-colored pectins and Ladies’ Ears,
Arranged as on a gray rag of rotted calico,
The buried Indian Princess’s skirt;
With these the monotonous, endless, sagging coast-line
Is delicately ornamented.
Thirty or more buzzards are drifting down, down, down,
Over something they have spotted in the swamp,
In circles like stirred-up flakes of sediment
Sinking through water.
Smoke from woods-fires filters fine blue solvents.
On stumps and dead trees the charring is like black velvet.
The mosquitoes
Go hunting to the tune of their ferocious obbligatos.
After dark, the fireflies map the heavens in the marsh
Until the moon rises.
Cold white, not bright, the moonlight is coarse-meshed,
And the careless, corrupt state is all black specks
Too far apart, and ugly whites; the poorest
Post-card of itself.
After dark, the pools seem to have slipped away.
The alligator, who has five distinct calls:
Friendliness, love, mating, war, and a warning
Whimpers and speaks in the throat
Of the Indian Princess.
Related poetry:
- A Florida Sunday From cold Norse caves or buccaneer Southern seas Oft come repenting tempests here to die; Bewailing old-time wrecks and robberies, They shrive to priestly pines with many a sigh, Breathe salutary balms through lank-lock’d hair Of sick men’s heads, and soon this world outworn Sink into saintly heavens of stirless air, Clean from confessional. One […]...
- The duel The gingham dog and the calico cat Side by side on the table sat; ‘T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!) Nor one nor t’ other had slept a wink! The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate Appeared to know as sure as fate There was going to be a terrible spat. […]...
- The Fury Of Sunrises Darkness As black as your eyelid, Poketricks of stars, The yellow mouth, The smell of a stranger, Dawn coming up, Dark blue, No stars, The smell of a love, Warmer now As authenic as soap, Wave after wave Of lightness And the birds in their chains Going mad with throat noises, The birds in their […]...
- Bells, Pool And Sleep Bells overbrim with sound And spread from cupolas Out through the shaking air Endless unbreaking circles Cool and clear as water. A stone dropped in the water Opens the lips of the pool And starts the unovertaking Rings, till the pool is full Of waves as the air of bells. The deep-sea bell of sleep […]...
- The Bight [On my birthday] At low tide like this how sheer the water is. White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare And the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches. Absorbing, rather than being absorbed, The water in the bight doesn’t wet anything, The color of the gas flame turned as low as possible. […]...
- The Vagaries of Fishes After they passed beneath us I could tell More would be coming, beneath the sand, Under the bejeweled sky, under the first Layer of earth where water exists In flutes and eddies. I lay there with you, Not wanting to leave your side even For them, the miraculous creatures of sex And sediment, the ones […]...
- Burial of the Minnisink On sunny slope and beechen swell, The shadowed light of evening fell; And, where the maple’s leaf was brown, With soft and silent lapse came down, The glory, that the wood receives, At sunset, in its golden leaves. Far upward in the mellow light Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, Around a far […]...
- An Empty Threat I stay; But it isn’t as if There wasn’t always Hudson’s Bay And the fur trade, A small skiff And a paddle blade. I can just see my tent pegged, And me on the floor, Cross-legged, And a trapper looking in at the door With furs to sell. His name’s Joe, Alias John, And between […]...
- The Dictators An odor has remained among the sugarcane: A mixture of blood and body, a penetrating Petal that brings nausea. Between the coconut palms the graves are full Of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles. The delicate dictator is talking With top hats, gold braid, and collars. The tiny palace gleams like a watch And the rapid […]...
- Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
- Memoriam A. H. H.: 67. When on my bed the moonlight fall When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water of the west, There comes a glory on the walls: Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame Along the letters of thy name, And o’er the number of thy years. The […]...
- A Florida Ghost Down mildest shores of milk-white sand, By cape and fair Floridian bay, Twixt billowy pines a surf asleep on land And the great Gulf at play, Past far-off palms that filmed to nought, Or in and out the cunning keys That laced the land like fragile patterns wrought To edge old broideries, The sail sighed […]...
- Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground From bristly foliage You fell Complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany, As perfect As a violin newly Born of the treetops, That falling Offers its sealed-in gifts, The hidden sweetness That grew in secret Amid birds and leaves, A model of form, Kin to wood and flour, An oval instrument That holds within it Intact delight, […]...
- Hayeswater A region desolate and wild. Black, chafing water: and afloat, And lonely as a truant child In a waste wood, a single boat: No mast, no sails are set thereon; It moves, but never moveth on: And welters like a human thing Amid the wild waves weltering. Behind, a buried vale doth sleep, Far down […]...
- The Netherlands (fragment) Water and windmills, greenness, Islets green; Willows whose Trunks beside the shadows stood Of their own higher half, and willowy swamp: Farmhouses that at anchor seem’d in the inland sky The fog-transfixing Spires Water, wide water, greenness and green banks, And water seen...
- Seashore On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead And the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds The children meet with shouts and dances. They build their houses with sand And they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats And smilingly float […]...
- On the Seashore On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances. They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float […]...
- Passageways Who set, between those rocks like cinder, To show the honey of dream, That golden broom, Those blue rosemaries? Who painted the purple mountains And the saffron, sunset sky? The hermitage, the beehives, The cleft of the river The endless rolling water deep in rocks, The pale-green of new fields, All of it, even the […]...
- A Meeting She steps into the dark swamp Where the long wait ends. The secret slippery package Drops to the weeds. She leans her long neck and tongues it Between breaths slack with exhaustion And after a while it rises and becomes a creature Like her, but much smaller. So now there are two. And they walk […]...
- Purple Martins IF we were such and so, the same as these, Maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, Tumbling half over in the water mirrors, Tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, Tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple […]...
- The Black Hawk War of the Artists WRITTEN FOR LORADO TAFT’S STATUE OF BLACK HAWK AT OREGON, ILLINOIS To be given in the manner of the Indian Oration and the Indian War-Cry. Hawk of the Rocks, Yours is our cause to-day. Watching your foes Here in our war array, Young men we stand, Wolves of the West at bay. Power, power for […]...
- Shells from the Coast mistaking Shells from the Coast mistaking I cherished them for All Happening in After Ages To entertain a Pearl Wherefore so late I murmured My need of Thee be done Therefore the Pearl responded My Period begin...
- The ride to bumpville Play that my knee was a calico mare Saddled and bridled for Bumpville; Leap to the back of this steed, if you dare, And gallop away to Bumpville! I hope you’ll be sure to sit fast in your seat, For this calico mare is prodigiously fleet, And many adventures you’re likely to meet As you […]...
- Troth with the Dead The moon is broken in twain, and half a moon Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky; The other half of the broken coin of troth Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie. They buried her half in the grave when they laid her away; I had […]...
- The Fountain Oh in the deep blue night The fountain sang alone; It sang to the drowsy heart Of a satyr carved in stone. The fountain sang and sang But the satyr never stirred Only the great white moon In the empty heaven heard. The fountain sang and sang And on the marble rim The milk-white peacocks […]...
- The Dark Hour And now, when merry winds do blow, And rain makes trees look fresh, An overpowering staleness holds This mortal flesh. Though well I love to feel the rain, And be by winds well blown The mystery of mortal life Doth press me down. And, In this mood, come now what will, Shine Rainbow, Cuckoo call; […]...
- Torch, The ON my northwest coast in the midst of the night, a fishermen’s group stands watching; Out on the lake, that expands before them, others are spearing salmon; The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water, Bearing a Torch a-blaze at the prow....
- The Farewell Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings Where the noisome insect stings Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air; Gone, […]...
- Dillard Sissman The buzzards wheel slowly In wide circles, in a sky Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie Beating the grass into long waves. My kite is above the wind, Though now and then it wobbles, Like a man shaking his shoulders; And the tail […]...
- Aunt Leaf Needing one, I invented her – The great-great-aunt dark as hickory Called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud Or The-Beauty-of-the-Night. Dear aunt, I’d call into the leaves, And she’d rise up, like an old log in a pool, And whisper in a language only the two of us knew The word that meant follow, And we’d travel Cheerful […]...
- This Side Of The Truth (for Llewelyn) This side of the truth, You may not see, my son, King of your blue eyes In the blinding country of youth, That all is undone, Under the unminding skies, Of innocence and guilt Before you move to make One gesture of the heart or head, Is gathered and spilt Into the winding […]...
- Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
- Blue Squills How many million Aprils came Before I ever knew How white a cherry bough could be, A bed of squills, how blue! And many a dancing April When life is done with me, Will lift the blue flame of the flower And the white flame of the tree. Oh burn me with your beauty, then, […]...
- The Kingfisher The kingfisher rises out of the black wave Like a blue flower, in his beak He carries a silver leaf. I think this is The prettiest world so long as you don’t mind A little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life That doesn’t have its splash of happiness? There are […]...
- William Jones Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me, Needing a name from my books; Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, Stamped with the stamp of Spoon […]...
- Consummation Of Grief I even hear the mountains The way they laugh Up and down their blue sides And down in the water The fish cry And the water Is their tears. I listen to the water On nights I drink away And the sadness becomes so great I hear it in my clock It becomes knobs upon […]...
- Riprap Lay down these words Before your mind like rocks. placed solid, by hands In coice of place, set Before the body of the mind in space and time: Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall riprap of things: Cobble of milky way, straying planets, These poems, people, lost ponies with Dragging saddles and rocky sure-foot trails. […]...
- The Perch There is a fork in a branch Of an ancient, enormous maple, One of a grove of such trees, Where I climb sometimes and sit and look out Over miles of valleys and low hills. Today on skis I took a friend To show her the trees. We set out Down the road, turned in […]...
- A Letter I have been wondering What you are thinking about, and by now suppose It is certainly not me. But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering Blood knows what it knows. It talks to itself all night, like a sliding moonlit sea. Of course, it is talking of you. At dawn, where […]...
- Four in the Morning Cried the navy-blue ghost Of Mr. Belaker The allegro Negro cocktail-shaker, “Why did the cock crow, Why am I lost, Down the endless road to Infinity toss’d? The tropical leaves are whispering white As water; I race the wind in my flight. The white lace houses are carried away By the tide; far out they […]...