Florida Excuses

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Our father called the clouds, the tall and white

Ones, mountains of his state.  We all make do.

The only peaks he’d seen were somewhat slight

Between his birthplace and Chicago.  True

Ones like the Rockies, those so high that snow

Obscures them, he had not encountered on

That journey as a boy.  He did not know

The facts and so imagination’s dawn

Took over in his heart and brain.  The snakes

In Florida, the rattlesnakes, the fangs

In cotton, waterfowl, and ducks and drakes

Replaced high summits, easing peakless pangs.

  He brought Big Bertha home for sons to play

    With.  She roared rattles at them, thought them prey.