The Keys

Somehow I’ve always planned to visit you
in whatever is your off season, to wander
your back ways and appreciate sea level,
where I have lingered but never lived.

Never tempted to settle on you,
though precisely that vague potential—
like painting my nails or bright red lipstick—
is attractive to imagine. What

if I had taken every step in some other
direction from the ones I followed?
(“Living in the Gore timeline,” said a friend,
which would have been my choice.)

Would I be a footloose poet there,
as I once dreamed of Santa Fe, whose aridity
and elevation would be more familiar,
scrounging a living at dishwashing
while residing deeply in poetry?

My paths instead moved me to this town,
a mere seventy feet above the sea
according to the maps of Delaware County.

Low and east enough that hurricanes
will sometimes wander through, but not
as vulnerable as you. Am I merely thinking
about a trip, learning to spell bougainvillea?

And meanwhile as I idly ponder and invest
my time in other projects, the sea is rising,
and who knows how long anyone without scuba gear
or a submarine will be able to visit you?

Sibelan Forrester
Morton