From a drone
The man-made waterways
Spread out their fingers
A sailboat sputters
Past humdrum condominiums
Toward the mouth
Of Boca Ciega Bay
The old Mercury puffs
A few thick clouds
Before it stalls
Then a lull
The timing near perfect:
The wind billows the sails
Full sail ahead
The ageless current
That drives the air
That stirs the water
And moves the hull
Toward the sea moves me
And causes my fingers
To move across the page
The drone zooms in to showcase the pool
As it juts into a widening channel
The area deserted
Except for an old man near the water’s edge
He is regally robed and safari helmeted
Sitting and writing
In the cage of his red-wheeled walker
It is summer in Florida
He interrupts himself to look around
Then goes back to taking notes
On the secret life of plants
Zoom in closer:
I am that man
I open myself to the silence
There’s enough of it here
To hear the tiniest of wings
Not the drone taking
Wing from MacDill Air Base
But the sound of a frail creature
Swollen with pollen
Toiling to hold itself up
In the empty air
Waiting with grace
For the fall
The inevitable splash
In that same instant
Sun sparklers trawl their nets
Across the surface
To catch this quiet
How could I have missed it?
Something sacred was about to land
Swimmers invade the pool
Instead of swimming they stand
In the water or move a limb
Talk of tai chi and yoga
And cancer and catheters
A father with Alzheimer’s
A neighbor’s lingering terminal illness
A death
For a few seconds all is quiet
Maybe too quiet
The air begins to cloy
With baby oil and iodine
A professor whose gray hair is braided
Announces that the spirit
Must be grounded in light
Another interrupts her
With The Power of Now
Soon all is aflutter
The sounds distant and nonsensical
As the chirping of birds
What they leave behind
Is stillness so maddening
The shrill lawnmower
Is welcome noise
Stillness then
Is not the absence of sound
And loveliness not always a flower
Unless I see it for the first time
How the filaments in the center
Thinner than paper
Aspire upward
Opening
Never preening
And when its time has come
A petal does not mind drying
Never minds
Falling
Under the nose
Of a mechanical owl
And barrier fishing lines
Two Florida sparrows land
To gulp water
Splash one another
And spur the moment to frolic
One flies away
The other looks on
The slight wings beating the water
To drown its sorrow
Before it too flies off
In the same direction
Stillness is not
Always the lack of motion
The birds were not nervous
When they gave themselves
Over to doing what they do
They have flown beyond artificial nets
Even ceremonial doves
Defy formation without
Fretting about falling
Or bettering their last
Audition
On the Tiki hut
A palm frond loses its footing
The vertical drop
Fans into a swan dive
Still it misses the water
And scrapes along the pool’s edge
Waiting to be airborne again
In the shadow
Of a sundial
A caterpillar plant comes to life
Breakdancing to a sudden gust
The stem shivers and little hairs
Thin and fall
Into transparence
In the whitening sun
Each floats on air
To its own rhythm
Its own
Stylized breaking crawl
The mower cuts all that have landed
In its path into finer filigree
To be airlifted or sprayed
Into green water
And carried out colorless
As they reach the sea
They are as much a part of the great
Current as the dancing seahorse
The feather star
Or the rainbow anemone
What was dander in the grass
Is now a great spirit
More brilliant in its sheerness
Than the oleander
The pool light comes on underwater
I watch the lightshow on the bottom
Lace curtains dance in and out of focus
And shudder at the slightest touch
A single breath from me sets off ripples
Changing the mesh of an entire universe
Each pattern more intricate than the last
As sound waves translate
Into shape-shifting
Fractals of light
I keep blowing on the surface
Mesmerized by zebras crawling
Down my leg
The shifting lines continue to drill
Their spiraling illusions
Right through the concrete
To the underside of life
All I do is to poke
A finger in the water and—voila!
A diaphanous mandala
Alive and billowing
Spreads out and downward
And starts to gel
In the viscous slow motion
Of a lava lamp overflowing
To an underground river
And an endless formless
Waxen ocean
The submarine light
Insinuates itself through
The murky green of night vision
Into the very treacle of the sea
And what unfolds before the eye
Is an undulating breathing
Undiscovered yet familiar
—opening—
Forming and reforming
In fleeting time-lapse
Corals becoming reefs becoming
An island of coral
The runway of the landing
As I tread way
Into the secret life of the jungle
Leaves waver
Dry and yellow
Into haystacks of old Europe
Changing in shape and color
Into towers of Cholla cactuses
Teepee huts crowned with
The feathers of raised spirits
Images of burial mounds
Subterranean pyramids
Glowing embers red and volcanic
Burst and spatter
Every edifice cornice and porous
Surface of concrete jungle
With a riotous magma of color
Melting and molding
Every molecule
Into sacred geometry
Gecko gargoyles mechanical owls
A razor-sharp sunburst
Appear in glaring colors
To scare off buzzards unwanted
Solicitors and all other bloodsuckers
That impersonate time
From the Kenmore to Embassy row
Condominiums raise
Their sacred totems
To the beat of Tocobaga drums
An ancient wind instrument
Billows the sails
And makes the fingers of water tremble
Artists bricklayers dragon slayers
Sailors and whistling minstrels
Woman warriors
Weary from battles for their
Own secret heart
Every grain of sand
Blown here from distant shores
Every brush and crush of petal
Filament of flower sundial and owl
An animate and timeless
Sacrament of grace
From Opening at Town Shores (YellowJacket Press, 2019). Copyright © 2019 Peter Hargitai. Used with permission of the author.