Everglades (Flamingo), 2010

Spiny cirrus crystals over Florida Bay at becalmed sunrise
drifting wispy, the soaring fossil wings of feathered flight-
today the wind retires, royal palms are royal still beside
black vultures flocked and jostling carrion in dawn's rosy light.

White pelicans soar in formation with black tipped chevrons
riding warm thermals that rise from this prairie coastal strip,
a synchronicity unspoken controls the swooping squandron
on a blue canvas under the drooped mahogany's mossy tips.

Mud clay banks bunk over a beach strewn with swollen reeds
where footprints slide to gush at tides but never to stay at all:
no trace will ever tarry for the pert killdeer's feigning needs
nor save the brown splash of the proud pelican's swift fall.

The rustle in the bushes that made you freeze and turn behind
is a snake that slithers, mostly, in the mangrove of your mind.

JD State Park, 2010

A coney lolls under cooling shadow of aluminum bins,

sniffs the humid wind blown through treeless hillocks

ignoring the loop of shell roads shorn of saplings thin

as when sight adheres past scrub pines and simple forks

to a swampy place where gators wait in carnal silence

and feral pigs bristle brown under fronds in rustling rut.

If always a pond in the sand it's a masked green suspense

while the river still swirls with tawny fishes schooled but

in the temporal buoyance of trolling on mirrored peace

the glass is broken with sudden rolls to a grassy shore.

A man yells Quebecois into a pay phone at river's beach

but the concessions stand will tender hickory as before,

so rest tonight, eyes heavenly as the cypher face of Orion

creeps from east to west in his glacial chase of setting suns.

Wekiwa Springs, 2010

Born to churn opaquely, the circular headwater spring's

constant warmth respires in rocky black and sandy aqua

where a fuming rises under igneous prisms of mossy cling

and a darting mirth of minnows quicksilvers the grotto spa

near a drained lantern's orange glow in fast fading light.

Scant promise from a sandy trail though beige meadows

where the orange blaze on gnarled pine fades to white

and leads a squint astray under the coniferous boughs.

An arc of bending darkness mistaken in creeping fog

skulks crackled under the foot near grey palms in line-

heard by a black paw a scratch on the fallen bark log

under the swirl of Ursa Minor and a sky dimmed pine

which float overhead in a glass from reflective remove

and, in tracking the stars, you can sense the earth move.