San Antonio, Florida

 

They don’t mow on Sundays in San Antonio.
They keep the seventh day for Paz
and Neruda, for Simic angels
whose wings are made of smoke.

 

And they walk their dogs softly in
the morning, so they will not miss
the smallest utterance of Whitman
or of John Clare, who pace the parks

 

early, when the ground fog’s rising
and the oranges are lanterns
on their stems. And sometimes
they go to bed changed. And

 

they’ll swear it was not they who
fumbled in their sheets at dawn,
as the poets rose like grass, and
the mowers coughed and were still.