Copperwood Reflection Poem by Barry Middleton

The morning air withholds
its hint of what the day will be.

And so I wait and watch
beneath the gumbo limbo tree.

By afternoon the clouds
are alabaster bales of cotton.

They conjure up my youth,
and memories I had forgotten.

Distant thunder looms.
A breeze stirs a cabbage palm.

The rattle of a frond
predicts an ending to the calm.

Lightning splits the sky
amid a gray and restless wind.

So I retreat to home,
to shelter and the storm within.