03 Mar Pascua Florida
Call her Eden,
Where rivers of bounty rise
From every Publix flowing toward 95;
Replacing murals of angels and histories:
Herons in our rivers and sailfish in our seas.
Find it farther
South and east than most,
Yet not the South nor the East Coast.
Kings in sandals and short-cut chinos,
Founded dynasties in sugar and railroads;
Highway signs that read like litanies
Along the shores swaddled in the Gulf Stream.
These, our castles,
Passed over by hurricanes
When we mark the door with metal panes.
The Keys of the kingdom, you understand
Seceded without a single battle;
Alligators roam free across the land like sacred cattle.
No mountains lie at the gate to outer space;
Behold our Zion, the holy Everglades.
Storied names from conquistadors
Or unconquered Seminoles
That languish along the interstate for lost, southbound souls.
A nation, a state, numbered twenty-seven:
Florida, the flower-feast under bright heaven.