Poems by Shalamar Sibley

Meanwhile, at Key West

by Shalamar Sibley

From Canary Fall 2018

Shalamar lives in the Upper Mississippi watershed a short distance from the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, and Minnehaha Falls.

I.
Under a Live Oak over coffee with chicory
I catch up on the news

The logic of a boat is self-evident.
New Orleans has got the low-down blues,
New York wants to hold back the water
and some say this place’ll be under water
soon, sugar-sand beaches submerged.
This island borrows time,
awash in its Key West blues.

II.
Secret garden, mid-morning.
I prop my bike against a Banyan.
The world shrinks around me.

In the circumstance of this history
first cause was necessary boredom
when the doldrums set in
looping like a Steely Dan riff
through the sleeping drift of collective mind,
barely audible. For some time many things
flowed past perception--
What is the value of Bougainvillea red?
Where have all the key deer gone?
They looked for dry land to take hold,
to wake us up to smell the mangroves
but this is selective hearing.
(Cacophony’s too soft,
the stench, too sweet.)

III.
Afternoon. I walk before the storm,
I’ve traveled to the end of the road.

More of what’s forgotten surfaces--
tropical almond trees on Petronia Street,
how the bromeliad on Amelia breathes,
rooster crowing at noon on Caroline,
lost in maladaptive chronobiology
as Hemingway’s cats swim past us.

IV.
Mallory Square at sunset. In this world of fire eaters
where clowns walk on stilts
every move should be considered action

Meanwhile
we gather on front porches,
small talk swept up by ceiling fans.
We stand at the shoreline
against deepening melon sky.
Everyone’s in tow, adrift
in the uncertainty of the evening.

V.
Life on a coral mountain, arms interlocked,
we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors.

Fact is, downsizing is hard.
Before we know it
one dreaded hallowed day
such a planet is left
hollowed out by its own absences,
so maybe we jump ship
and dive deeply in, past history
to dig through a muddy post-mortem
to finally read the sign,
motto of a submarined Old Town,
One Human Family.