Geoffrey Philp

song to the loas

(for felix morriseau-leroy)

imagine how these anhingas give themselves
to the wind, riding the air currents over the canal

as it turns away from the highway's hum
and the live oak's acorns falling between palmetto

fronds and poinciana's fire; or how mullets break
the surface of the water in their singular joy

that makes them one with the air; so do i hope,
when my body flames with the crotons, my nâme

with the roots of the banyan, my little good angel,
held in faded, photo albums and remembered years

later in a libation, and my star of destiny settles into its
constellation, my great good angel will find peace in ginen

meditation on snake creek

fog billows over the troubled face of the canal;
a quilt of clouds, torn by a stand of pines, a tangle

of cumulus stuck in their needles, stretches over the hot
road rising in the east to the reeb of mallards strutting

over imaginary property lines of fulford- by-the-sea--
neighbors with new silverware and noise--down streets

with names as provisional as the ones we give ourselves,
behind houses swollen as the frayed textbooks

that line my shelves; while overhead in the frigid wind
from the west, past hassidic women, power-walking,

checking each other's pulse as if they weren't going to live
forever, a kestrel circles rat snakes through the everglades,

sand skitters over the page into the next millennium,
a stream that quenched ponce's thirst, washed mud

from the hair of tequesta, pours over my crown, neck,
chest, feet-- the hard portions—and into the sap of the mangrove

snake creek elegies

the x where we now live, the marked cross hairs
where any day now i expect to see coyote, brer rabbit,

or eshu with his famous hat strolling down the street,
a real cocksman, to stir up troubles with my neighbors.

but i 'm ready for him now; i've lived to have my store
of tricks and spells to ward him off--except the answer

to the prank he played on the former owners
who've left the mezuzah hanging over the door.

ii

this royal poinciana whose branches hover
over my studio, like a forgotten ancestor,
was planted by some cracker, now a statistic
of white flight from dade county, afraid
of what miami has become, a muddle
of races, dark as the canal that runs
behind the houses, that separates goyim
from hassidim, and undermines foundations
of the playground, sprouted its stem through deep
wounds in the limestone, like the web of highways
that left overtown homeless; put out its first buds,
smothered by ash from the names mcduffie
and lozano; blooms every juneteenth through august
after andrew's baptism of homestead,
and has grown down from the sky, giving way to the tug
of gravity, still holding its fire against white clouds,
admitting itself to be a part of the landscape, despite
twisted limbs, and giving shade to my brown children

iii

down by the bridge, water moccasins slither
through bracken and beer bottles like the advent
of a nightmare--no wonder the ancient

egyptians cowered before snakes--masters
of eternity whose fatal bite sent the victim, unaided,
to face maat and thoth, the ibis headed god, whose beak

balanced a feather over maat's jaws, then weighed
the victim's heart--a life swollen with fear--
only to be swallowed by maat's brothers waiting in the dark.

iv

under the murky water, tarpons,
with beards made from rusted hooks,
silver glimmering in the grasses and reeds,
drawn there as naturally as those middle-aged lovers,
parked in a black mustang every noon at the foot
of the bridge, regular as the tide--while her husband's
at work, and he's taken a lunch break from the office --
they undress each other and obey a pull greater
than their promises; or those kids at dusk,
at the roots of the flowering dogwood, smoking
buddha, playing the dozens with dr. dre
or ice cube as background music, arguing
endlessly about who’s the better deejay,
like david, paul, pat, and me, kotched
on the fence, listening to shakespeare's bass
streaming out of twin eighteen inch speakers
and augustus pablo's haunting melodica
darting between the thrashing guitars
that strained the tweeter's throat,
until some cop, like saddlehead,
would try to sneak up on us,
to cart us off to jail in bright handcuffs,
but david would always sense his shadow,
and before he could tighten his dragnet,
we'd be off into the night, fluorescent
puma sweatshirts flashing in the darkness.

v

gray manatees munch river grass,
anhingas sun the selves on broken limbs,
and the muddy path around the lake doubles
like legba's riddles about opossums.

so what's left now? like the famous warrior,
his enemies slain, the kingdom restored,
he put down his bow, useless now in the real war,
to rebuild the hearth beyond the beckoning road.

nature walk

to talk about these trees, lakes, rivers
is not to be deaf to all the horrors:

a brother was lynched on this flowering dogwood,
brickell's skyscrapers cataract with ash from rosewood,

the suwannee will never wash away the blood
from these states, and those deserted dirt roads,

inviting as the drawl of southern belles in leon county,
are not as innocent as they seem to be.

yet this river, subversive as its own silt, overruns
its banks, stirs the rank mud, startles spoonbills, herons

and manatees in their own element, accepts complicity--
life feeding on itself--with the yellow pollen of the trees.

smoke screen, tallahassee 1998

the television snowed, satellites gone awry,
except for the sure and faithful t.b.n. whose frost
haired preacher promises fire for sinners

like me, cursed with the sin of caanan,
too proud to submit to the gray slate
of their eyes and too humble to admit the grace

from a burst of rain that skitters
across a graveyard of cypresses, barely
enough to wash blackened limbs blasted

thin of their barks by summer wildfires' streak
along alligator alley, then south to the edge
of the everglades where a heron interrogates

a snake, and failing, it passes through the hooked
neck, the paradox we share: the necessity of death,
the inevitability of love--to a green field

where my mother has become a live oak, spears
of st. augustine, beside the smell of wood
smoke lifting into a sky barred with wisps of cirrus.

florida garden

to hear the way they tell it,
you'd think that we didn't have the right
to stand on this ground, hallowed
by the blood of all the undone, white
black, indian, pressed down by the hooves
of night riders, sprouting like kudzu
around the lakes of our state, but my mother
and i own a plot of land in orlando
where we've planted something older
and dearer than this cassava root that grips
the limestone rock and squeezes water
up the brittle stem, where her grandchildren
play ring-around-the-roses, and its leaves span
the southern cross rising above alpha centauri.

everglades litany

(for nadia)

and blessed be the morning star in the arms of gumbo limbo
blessed be the sun on the cruciform wings of anhingas
blessed be the wind where ospreys and black vultures ride
blessed be zebra butterflies on crowns of tamarind
blessed be lightning on the spires of royal palms.
blessed be wildfires that temper berries of the green hawthorn
blessed be hurricanes that tear at the bark of tallowwood and bay-cedars
blessed be bracken and wild olives huddled by salt marshes
blessed be august heat that rasps the throat of morning glories
blessed be panthers and deer hiding behind a screen of leatherwood
blessed be brown pelicans grunting in mangroves after thunderstorms
blessed be the evening star over aisles of magnolias
blessed be barred owls cooing by swamps and hardwood hammocks
blessed be june beetles dusting pollen off their backs in the damp air
blessed be woodstorks and spoonbills wading through resurrection ferns
blessed be chanterelles, their yellow plumes rising from oak and pine
blessed be the moon ripening with pond apples on the banks of canals
blessed be dew and mist, fog and hail, falling on blades of sugar cane
blessed be loggerhead turtles lumbering past the thorns of anemones
blessed be, blessed be all that move, live, and breathe on the edge of these lakes
blessed be, blessed be... everything

Cover Design: Joseph McNair