Florida Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Where was she in
The fairy stories
An invisible woman
Fainting under the orange trees-

There she gives me hope,
As in her background
An alligator slides into the canal
And disappears-

When she is out to make money
She serves young men under the palm trees
And looking up they wander along her neck
Into the Bay of Horses-

I do not know which one
Of them is having her tonight,
So far away
And I cannot care,
For closing my eyes I am with her,
Always admiring
The oldest city in America

Nearby in the mangroves
Behind the hidden pinkness of shells,
Maybe our children will be playing
As the waves are tamed into
The domestic estuaries

Where our fingers interlace
Then our lips share the salt
The wind has carried this far to us....