Poetry: the salt life

Snowbirds

Snowbirds:

Please don't take offense to
our 'welcome-now-go-home'
attitude.

We understand your flight from
black ice, snow shovels and frozen
gray skies.
It's endearing the way you
come to us in a wave
of exhales;
Your cares abandoned
in your coat pocket
back home,
Alongside crumpled Kleenex and
sticky throat lozenges.

Our service industries bow down to
your appetites, open wallets and ability
to morph into an audience:
Filling seats, buying tickets, renting
squares, shares and time.

We do try.
When you pour in, filling the space
between the crusts of clouds and sand
like too much pie filling.

We do try...
Politely maneuvering around
your grocery carts clogging
the aisle at Publix. Counting
backwards or counting
our breath as
we sit
in the parking lots that used to be
our highways;
Buying mangoes at midnight because
there's no room
to park
in our parking lots.

Detouring us to accommodate you.

We do try.
Because we also like turning
strangers into friends,
Seeing our home fresh through
your eyes;

We do watch you–
Now that the thousands of
Ibis are gone.
(The ponds are gone, also.)

As you watch the sun
sink below the horizon;
smelling of sunscreen and
the Pinot Grigio in your
plastic cups.

A shared awe.
In these moments we
don't have to try.

But also know that when
you go, when you flee
the humidity, leaving us to our
hurricane shutters and
evacuation routes,
We will exhale and stretch
into the quiet
space
you leave behind.

We will lay–empty as discarded,
pillaged clam shells—
(Our patience shucked)

Under the baking
August sun. We will float
in the salty ocean bowl–
warm as bathwater–and
recharge while smiling
languidly at the
stories
you've left behind.