Venice, Florida

The clouds went on each afternoon –
bodybuilding to a rippling mass,
flat-topped, or with bedhead;
from a puffball, picayune,
they did something to the grass
fluorescing on the watershed.

It rained so hard all summer long,
every field was canalized
by overflow, or turned into lagoon.
The fountain jets burped a song
of bullfrogs poolside, bullseyed,
prelude to a honeymoon.

Electricity’s appendages, like
butterfly filaments, alighted on things,
charging the soil with nitrogen,
...