Florida

FLAGAMI

Miami River Inn

I

Laying in bed

so many hundred feet from the Miami River

of tugged freighters decked in old automobiles

and innumerable bicycles, serial numbers vanished

like eddies momentarily whirled off the stern then

crushed against the river’s concrete jacket of piers.

II

Neighborhood grime of east Little Havana

beyond our steel fence locked with dollars:

In here, antiques and fresh paint,

motionless fans stuck against renovated ceiling,

a courtyard, where a woman slowly eats an orange.

Outside, resolute Nicaragua, Columbia, Cuba

walk to work en el campo nuevo,

poverty weed sprouted beneath domino tables.

Morning sun in their eyes, intaglio angels

etched in the twenties watch the river,

sheared chunks of stucco wings fallen

into piles of hopeful detritus in doorways,

bits of the future waiting

for the right key.

III

Beneath the Flagami Bridge

a dead cat, wedged inside the steel pylon

stiff, black, glossy with rain and exhaust,

pop-eyed, surprised at death so quick

to steal away the tiger swiftness

raged in concrete jungles,

come to claim us all

sure as rusted bolts fallen from an iron sky shatter.

Overhead traffic rumbles

the belly of the citys’ hunger

insatiable.

IV

Across from the Inn, the old River Pilot’s house

pitch thick Dade pine gnawed through

like ship’s timber splayed after storm

beneath the cocoplum, beneath seagrape, beneath mangrove,

beneath the lantana poking through floorboards,

roof a-tilt like the deck of a great liner going under,

ground risen up to clinch the last solid foot,

the coral rock foundation hewn from Tamiami

a billion coral polyps impervious to decay

upholding a copse of pine

bent beneath countless beatings

lash of sun, lash of rain.

Old house wound in a shroud of morning

Irregular as a storm riddled sky.

Milk paint peeling and fallen away

bares a mural of chipped clouds and splinters

where the sky has fallen through the floor

and spilled in abundant weeds,

tears of Conquistadors

whose works will be overcome.

V

The backyard faces the river,

the backyard embraces the tug, freighter, robust yacht,

the backyard full of crab and lobster traps

net and cable reels and winches,

where los marineros se sienten,

como las palomas,

like the birds, their hands fly

speaking of oceans and nations across the straits;

Of the carapacial knowledge

Chattered by lobsters in limestone tongues,

Marching across the seafloor;

Of the extreme calculus of violent seawaves

and the resulting boat become a toy

wed to the crushing physics of crest and trough,

the stern breaching swells,

the vast ocean moving like a woman’s

passionate body they must give their lives to please

or perish for lack of skill

drowned out.

VI

Los marineros squat on traps with rope

and con leches and staple guns,

assembling their futures.

The Flagami bell tolls prayers, annunciations,

The bridge span genuflects, rises to salute

The seaward bound, outgoing tide of freight and secrets

And salt to savor or draw closed

The wound of the world

Life stings.

The Indian Princess

(a fragment, to be continued..)

A song rises from the mouth of the river

Miami Circle a perfect O

long vowel in the throat of a Miccosukee princess

calling out the sun

{wei ai a lei}

Miami,

Julia Tuttle sends Flagler

a second invitation,

orange blossom and green leaf

to the frost blasted Palm Beaches, 1895

come south to the wilderness,

to Fort Dallas,

to Seminole traders with buckskin and bird plumes

and women piled with the beads of virtue,

to the vast aquamarine carpet  of Biscayne Bay,

and bring the railroad.

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