Tarpon Springs

Tarpon Springs

Down past the sponge boats, where barnacles gum the bellies
of ships like myths of flight, merchants trade sponges for sugar,
sugar for sulking gods, then return again for the kitsch.
High on the hill, some parthenon juts: polished alligator heads
slick as midway sharks, postcards parceling out their palm trees,
sand-plastered, sun-drowned. Wish you were here.
Tiny pink-fanned shells backdropped with acrylic Florida
ocean-scapes float like suns in their netted shopping bags
for the long haul to Vermont. This is the Sponge Dock District,

where tourists like pelicans gobble up the bluefin, bucket
their catch in the crossfire of polaroids’ ocular flashes.
This is the new Athens, or some dream of a dream of it,
clinging to America’s finger, hard and padded
with the Old World, a finger jabbed in the Caribbean’s back.
Once, I slept in a village in Italy and dreamt of Africa.
I’m never where I want to be. Always there
when here—this Florida, my vineyard, and I am gorging

on olives plucked and plundered, pits spit with a kick
of the tongue. And these paint-peeled hurricane houses:
couldn’t they be the stucco cliff dwellings that lace
the Mediterranean? Couldn’t these sponges be Grecian
mouths wet with wine, gulls crying like winged Nike?
Suddenly, instead of crowding the streets with antiquity,
I give way to gulf sands mismatched as blown glass,
to oranges bloated with forgiveness, bees orbiting
the knotted blossoms. Couldn’t this be enough?