Key Largo to Key West
This poem was inspired by a trip we took last year from Key Largo to Key West ….
Key Largo to Key West
A sultry, agreeable haze lingers above Highway 1
A solitary egret makes a ponderous landing in a nearby red mangrove
A graceless alligator blinks just above the motionless water
Lazily contemplating his next kill
The african queen, harboured in a Bogart movie
Floats regally, a washed out awning
Protecting its mellowing beams,
Somehow hoping for a tranquil retirement
Tavernier emerges, Ocean Pointe concealed,
Between lanky bushes dissolving into gnarled, submerged roots
The sapphire painted buildings overlook
A sea, infinite in its harmony
Casual iguana glare, motionless
As if becalmed by the noonday swelter
Pelicans drift awkwardly between diving petrels
The translucent sky encouraging hermit crabs
To scurry into shady cavities
And the occasional squirrel to find the parasol of a myrtle oak
Cream colonial verandas overlook the Bay of Mexico
A sapphire ocean lightly lapping at languorous palm trees
Nurse sharks meander, barely noticed
In the summer iridescence
The ivory sand of Honda Beach, a crescent outlined by morning iris
Meditates, fire ants dawdle erratically across its sultry shore
A lone, sun wrinkled angler casts a desultory line,
Promptly falling back into an afternoon slumber
A solitary set of footprints dissolves into a deep cobalt reef
An open top mustang drifts over seven mile bridge,
A different ocean on either side
Contemplating an elegant sunset at Key West
A sun, decalescent in its deceitful subtlety
Passing marker 35 towards Big Pine Key
A Key deer saunters, somehow sensing its history
Wooden fishing piers protrude from concrete inlets
Key West appears, its tropical timbered quarters veiled by banyan trees
Conspicuous by their anonymity
A spectre of Hemingway shadows every terrace,
Permeating every timber
The customs house stands like a coral reminder
Of clandestine rum runners
St Pauls church, a white coned wooden steeple
Standing superior, aloft, among heavenly flame trees
Wandering along duval street, Sloppy Joes hints
At a literate past, the Parrot Bar rings with rhythm n’ blues,
Its rust covered roof, bleached green walls, a soulful reminder
Of bygone music, infused in its undusted joists
The day is drawing to dusk, the harbour coaxes us
The amber sun is lazily altering to a deep crimson,
Flaming it’s way to the horizon
Absorbed in a descending journey,
It evaporates over Wisteria Island
The daily crowd cheers, applauding, acknowledging nature
And dusk creeps into night
Written by: Terry Custance
terryc
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