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.

in the still of the

Dancing so civilized with no recourse to fail,

she bawls with blanket clutched in woolen sweat

where, under a darkened porch, the play reveals

a paisley counterpane of ghostly pale barely lit,

her crystal d'arc of thirst a shadowed octagon.

The opaque prism is fast gulped clear of passion

and the night's caffeine pulse that greeds upon

a mattress flopped is the restless turning ration.

Vertical blinds quickly turned too dusty creaked

for the woolen blanket's dreaming seams to settle

against a random chance as rising dawn is peeked

with orange streaks dimly bounced on colored metal,

these slats that fail to seal a frontal vision leaked,

his leering spiked by turns of sharp edged nettle.

Shadowy Salvation at Rest in Transit

The fluted profile that greys in shadow

over the imaginary Ionic column,

who sighed at sin for grinning over

the rumble of cracked macadam,

he utterly changes every time

the light bulb flickers in the creepy breeze.

The roar of the glasspacks is the wet fiction

that has been prophesy

in your purple tense of every instant instant

that might never even happen,

not unless in a thinly minded white conrer

just behind the flowered pantry door.

You're in good hands, he said,

it's only the squeak of a mouse.

Zouave Ghost at Antietam Creek, 2010

Across the wispy creek with vast fingers of mist all grasping

and braiding the twisted boughs whose leafless remorse

looks moonward to expose a stare at pitted metal rasping

and blankly downward on a slowly moving reflective course,

where perfect steel reports echo and pierce again a perfect day,

the muscles that no longer ache shimmer beneath the tatters

of once buttoned epaulets over an open jacket's scarlet fray

in moving mist both blue and grey where flesh has ceased to matter.

With no lost home warmth longing in winter snow to pretend to

it wanders adrift in memory's aching realm along the lonely banks

with no needs from its drained and scattered flesh to attend to

searching in vain in the moonlit mist for its blasted missing ranks.

If it turned to grin the beige chill would freeze your core:

those hollow eyes that once saw yellow now see no more.

Hogg Rock Vista, 2010

A notice of runes carved by worms under the bark

of a stripped and fallen trunk is the first sneaky clue

along the mild ridge-line that a forest has hidden marks

that are easily missed in late autumn's leaf filtered dew.

Distracted at first by the scenic view of fog ruled tides

made by white mist in the rippled murky vales below,

it's hard to tell the blue sky from blue ground, besides

patches of bright hiker nylon then rise and voices echo

not as humbly silent as the voiceless creatures underleaf.

Working sideways sans the fussy serifs of civilized noise

but slowly across the rotted and wooden hole-filled sheaf,

the runes are a sonnet where no clock wound and poised

is ready to rudely tick and tock the climb to something new:

atop the crags of Hogg Rock, under heaven, with nothing to do.