A sinkhole chewed a canal through
the Florida bush.

In a can the mood-war was setting,
digging in irony packs.

Under the Seminole rub,
lawn chairs were crackling.

Each pool was a love organ,
the collected blue gales of, then all the tiny
witnesses grew as they swum the air,

collecting hair samples and car alarms
in the pink-palmed sundown.

Where our blues were shorn,
lawns buzzed with immigrants,
and couples in stretched fabric walked.

We were now the old folks, our fears
and loss of balance when we closed

our eyes in the shower. We remembered
long-dead cats bulging in an old campground,

a shed's greasy tools and tangle of fishing gear.
We feared the pedicures we paid for

and the insect-free islands our lush winters
of heaven preserved.

verse
Volume 34