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I wish I was a Florida poet.
by Meghan HelmichJust as there are no accents,
no waves and no snowstorms,
there are no Florida poets.
Pale, Anglo-Saxon fingers move lines
but collect no sun.
We sit on the beach and stare so far
in the blue and white, but the
only words rolling by
are attached to the backs of prop planes.
"Let's go Outback Tonight!"
The things I come into here are no different
than the ideas I might've found in Chicago
or North Dakota. The thing about Florida...
She's just a piece of them all,
jutting far out into the still gulf - only half Atlantic. 01/28/2009 Author's Note: jared....laurie.
:)
Posted on 01/29/2009
Copyright © 2025 Meghan Helmich
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Gabriel Ricard on 01/29/09 at 12:29 AM This theme's really bringing some great work out of you guys. This one is no exception. |
| Posted by Laurie Blum on 01/29/09 at 01:08 AM This is almost like a challenge! I'm glad you were insired Meghan. Nice write too! |
| Posted by Julie Adams on 01/29/09 at 10:22 PM I used to live in FL and this resonates on so many levels...love the final image!! kudos, jewels |
| Posted by Steven Kenworthy on 01/30/09 at 01:19 PM this is fun...this whole state thing going around. i think your last line gives the reader a lot to think about though. in all of its simplicity...which could've been its sole meaning...you created something more, and maybe short-changed florida a bit there. creating some sort of insufficiency...but then what do i know? |
| Posted by Chris Sorrenti on 02/13/09 at 03:42 AM Interesting perspective...my own being that perhaps all Floridians are poets then in their own way? I especially like the way you bring geography into the picture in that third and closing stanza. |
| Posted by Max Bouillet on 07/15/10 at 02:49 AM I know what you mean! I was in Orange Beach, AL (near Pensacola) for a few years and they were my most unproductive as a poet! To see that feeling so aptly placed into words is awesome. |
| Posted by Don Matley on 03/27/11 at 09:28 PM loved this..I think you have captured an inspirational apathy through your seeming uninspirational mood.You have set a beautiful piece in a scenic but sterile or perhaps blasé world.The blue water and white sand can be so overwhelming to me that there seems little to say about it.Once you are there, there is not much else I guess. The flatness of the Fl. geography does not help. Ernest Buckler wrote a great Canadian novel called "the mountain and the valley" in which he used the topography to create metaphors and comparisons of his characters to nature. I think he had an advantage being in Nova Scotia rather than in Florida.
All this to say I know of at least one Florida poet whose 'tongue and cheek' rule.
tks. |
| Posted by Timothy Wilson on 07/21/11 at 02:53 PM As a wanna-be florida poet myself, I must say this was pretty darn amazing. awesome work, Meghan. |
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