Compass Songs – The Philosopher in Florida
Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.
The Philosopher in Florida
Midsummer lies on this town
like a plague: locusts now replaced
by humidity, the bloodied Nile
now an algae-covered rivulet
struggling to find its terminus.
Our choice is a simple one:
to leave or to remain, to render
the Spanish moss a memory
or to pull it from trees, repeatedly.
And this must be what the young
philosopher felt, the pull of a dialectic so basic
the mind refuses, normally,
to take much notice of it.
Outside, beyond a palm-tree fence,
a flock of ibis mounts the air,
our concerns ignored
by their quick white wings.
Feathered flashes reflected in water,
the bending necks of the cattails:
the landscape feels nothing—
it repeats itself with or without us.
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