Florida Snow
The Everglades are burning. I’m fifteen.
I open the window, knock out the screen
and crawl up the tiles to the apex of the roof.
Overhead the black clouds march on hooves
from the sunset to the ocean. It’s rare for the wind
to carry the sugar burns in my direction.
I assume the purpose of the fires is to make
the sugar sweeter, but besides covering the state
in smoke, all they do is make the harvest cheaper.
Some men spent a fortune to drain the river
but the cost was all up front. The stalks get so dry some-
times a piece of lightning starts the fire for them
and what’s left behind can’t help becoming tinder.
I think the land will tire of not being water soon.
Tonight the air is cold and smells like winter.
Ashes fall around me like pieces of the moon.
Copyright © 2025 by P. Scott Cunningham. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 7, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Sugar growers in Florida burn their fields to remove the tops of the plants and make harvesting easier, even though machines now exist to eliminate this practice. The carcinogenic ash caused by the fires that falls over large swaths of the state is known locally as ‘black snow.’ As a kid, I would sometimes crawl out onto the roof of my parents’ house to watch the smoke. So much of what’s written about Florida ignores either its beauty or the sustained resistance of its residents against the state’s systemic violence and environmental degradation. I am trying in this poem to acknowledge both.”
—P. Scott Cunningham
P. Scott Cunningham
P. Scott Cunningham is the author of Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas Press, 2018), a finalist for the 2018 Miller Williams Poetry Prize. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois.