OLD FLORIDA, GIVEN BACK
                    -for Caryn   

1.
This song is a canopy road,
as much between times
                     as place to place,
and spanish moss, ghost waters,
kudzu,
	slinking like alligator eyes
through the trees.  

And a question,
like Florida before the selling:      

	not if, but when.    

2.
There is something of sorrow
even in this sea turtle:       

	a missing chunk of shell,
	a boat propeller,
	and two centuries to show for it,  

and all is much the same
			    except
the ocean is a slow concrete circle,
cloister,
	  round and round
			      forever.  

3.
Now, as we near the parting,
she is, and her Florida,
			  the trickle
and swirl of every fountain,
the ice-dark centuries of Wakulla Springs,       

	and how black and white the world seems
	after diving the angelfish reefs
	along Key Largo.  

These were things we said
or didn't say,
	and still I'm stuck
on a footpath
through the Maclay Gardens
in Tallahassee: 

		 here, goodbye is
neither more nor less than the lake shore,
treethick composure,
		         and the all-night ride
of waves in the marshgrass.

“Old Florida, Given Back” originally appeared in The Dead Mule in April of 2003.