Home State

                                                           In Florida, it’s always noon and everything is full of honey-                                                                                                                                                                                   Jack Gilbert

Mother, forgive me the days I sang alone.
Remember me as the child learning
to write at a table in a sand-colored room
wrought with the ocean’s repetition, and you
in that faded, blue one-piece, marbled
like a Florida moon that drags its chunk
up the rise of the coasts nightly,
speaking some aberrant gospel.

I was born of Azaleas and for now,
nothing can keep me from your hothouse fissure,
you state of delight, you yellow-bellied outlaw—
give me the leash to paradise.