Category Archives: Floridiana

Florida Pastoral

space Driving back from Micanopy late afternoon the sun slipped from between the clouds to cast long shadows down the horse-farms, the scattered equines like swans, curved stillnesses on the rolling lawns’ mowed repose. Always just a short ways further down … Continue reading

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Filed under Aging, Art and Heart, Arthurian Romance, Beauty Heals, Devotions, Floridiana, Grails, Love, Natural Supernatural, Nature, Otherworlds, Poetry

“You Must Believe In Spring”

space Late summer of  ‘95: Two years into my divorce, the hardest hammers of separation and guilt for breaking up a family ebbed back far enough to yearn again for what sustains. En route I went crazy for a young … Continue reading

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Filed under Aging, Art and Heart, Beauty Heals, Devotions, Floridiana, Grails, History, Immrama, Jazz, Love, Madness and Mania, Memoir, Music, Poetry, Remembrance, The Sea

Miss Itsy Bitsy’s Steam-A-Weenie Toast-An-Elven-Throne Bikini

space There’s nothing like getting high in the woods, she thinks,  freer at last with each toke to join the elves of Silmarillion in merry sport, swinging limb to limb through the dank foreset of delight. Or so it occurred … Continue reading

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Filed under Addiction, Floridiana, Forest Shenanagans, Madness and Mania, Nature, Poetry

Reading Jack Gilbert Again By The Sea

space Reading Jack Gilbert’s poems again by the sea, this time at Longboat Key on holiday with my wife. We lay in the shade of a blue umbrella, so dazed with heat we can barely breathe. The Gulf beach so … Continue reading

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Filed under Art and Heart, Beauty Heals, Blue, Devotions, Floridiana, Love, Natural Supernatural, Poetry, Prayer, The Sea

Creature Feature

space I’ve soldiered nature through a thousand drive-ins in this fakey fish-man’s suit, patrolling the mind’s lagoon of greeny silt-warm water for every threat of man though spawn of him I am, the awful frog prince with claws longer than … Continue reading

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Filed under Floridiana, Love, Madness and Mania, Natural Supernatural, Nature, Otherworlds, Poetry, Water-Folk

Accident in Fog

Early Sunday morning, traffic on Interstate 75 just west of here was shrouded in dense fog and smoke from a nearby wildfire (which authorities now believe was caused by arson), resulting in 19-vehicle pileup that killed 10 drivers. In 2008, … Continue reading

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Filed under Art and Heart, Floridiana, Grief, Immrama

Closing The Deal

space space You stand at the window of your hotel room, naked and still wet from the pool. Heavy curtains pull back to reveal palm trees winnowing lazy fronds. A fountain spouts glass into the brilliant Florida sky. You feel … Continue reading

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Filed under Addiction, Alcoholism, Culture, Death, Floridiana, Grails, Noir, Poetry, Prose, Sexuality

The Poet Atop An Old Cypress Tree By The Sea

space In memoriam “The Senator,” ca. 1600 BCE – 2012 CE My home’s the high acre of this cathedraling tree overlooking the sea, waves pounding so hard at the shore they resound in roots two hundred feet down. Mad Sweeney … Continue reading

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Filed under Aging, Art and Heart, Celestial events, Creativity, Death, Devotions, Floridiana, Forest Shenanagans, Myth and Archetype, Nature, poetics, Poetry, Shamanism, Spirituality, The Dark, The Sea

Tidesman

space My longing for you is the long-lost man inside this writing hand who walks forever on that beach you and I once and only walked together down, his voice inside my ear praying to and cursing every softly crashing … Continue reading

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Filed under Archetypal Mythology, Art and Heart, Arthurian Romance, Devotions, Floridiana, Grief, Life, Love, Oran, poetics, Poetry, Post-Christianity, Prayer, Sexuality, Shamanism, Spirituality, The Sea, Water-Folk

Orion (A Cold Winter Night’s Tale)

space Absolute cold now blankets the snow-drifted whiteout, the night sky fierce with temps nearing thirty degrees below zero. The North wind quells every living motion outside and grips down on the walls of her house with empty malice, the … Continue reading

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Filed under Art and Heart, Celestial events, Dream, Floridiana, Grief, Life, Love, Myth and Archetype, Nature, Poetry, Sexuality, Shamanism, Spirituality, The Dark, The Sea