Florida

Florida

Our Jewish grandparents lived in Florida,
Of course. Snow birds. We flew
Down there once a year, over spring
Break, when the Midwest was
An uninhabitable planet, to see them.
Like walking into a greenhouse in winter.
A kind of afterlife after the death 
We’d been witness to, the birds
Gone, the stark trees stricken 
Like the shadows the blast at Hiroshima 
Stamped on schoolhouse walls.
Florida was green, the color itself. Green
Is the wrong word. A sweater can be green. 
We need a greener word than green 
For that green, the green of the Garden 
Before the Fall. As for the ocean,
We were familiar with endlessness, 
We boys who sat, legs sashayed away 
From the controls, in the cab of the combine,
Staring down rows of corn to where 
They graduated into tassels. 
But we weren’t accustomed to endlessness 
Being also that deep. We crouched 
On the beach, packing sand fine 
As pink salt into plastic pails
Then tipping it out in that shape,
Glancing up warily at the sea as we did so,
Careful never to turn our backs to it.
Dad refused to take his shoes off.
Like all dairy farmers, it had been hard
Enough getting him to wear shorts.
Our grandmother spoke to our mother
Of books and the transgressions
Of a cousin whose named ended in a long e,
While our grandfather spoke to our father
About housing market volatility. Both 
Gone now, taken under, doing the old
Eternal back float. That night, lying
In a strange bed covered in hard pillows,
I still smelled on myself the scent of sunscreen, 
Felt the grit of sand on my skin 
That the flood of the shower had spared,
Each grain an ark like the one Noah built
In which all the scared animals were paired.