HA&L magazine issue Thirteen.1

Poetry • by Linda Frank 1

 

Poetry: Florida Suite


by Linda Frank



Big Sugar


Once you could look in any direction across
             the Everglades and see water, acres and acres
of water studded with thousands of islands

a wild solitude of sawgrass, thickets of shrub and vine
             muted greens and browns speckled with white
string lilies, violet bay bean, lotus and periwinkle.

Now ibis, egret and heron have almost disappeared
             from the swamps and marshland.
Now the eastern glades are suburbia

the central glades scarred by reservoirs and sewers
             and the northern rim spoiled
by sugar cane fields owned by Big Sugar, the Cubans

who abandoned their sugar farms to Castro and now
             run the world’s largest sugar empires in Florida.
Phosphorous run-off and fertilizer fuel

the explosion of algae, smother the wetlands, choke
             the sea turtles and manatee. Crawfish and snails
crawl out of Lake Okeechobee searching for oxygen.

    

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[Distillate © HA&L + Linda Frank {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]

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