William Meredith: Key West, Florida
from “Here and There”
(for Sylvia Shelly)
There in Key West, the singer lies asleep,
perhaps under a fan, after playing late
at the café. They kept her playing and singing
by the edge of the warm gulf
(after she’d watched the sun drop into it,
staying to cup Hesperus in her small hands
against the wind that rises suddenly then,
Until his flame caught) – they wouldn’t let her stop
at one o’clock. Now the current
runs past the island very fast
as if in panic. But the trees flower
calmly in the heat outside her house.
