My Aunt Jeanette was Beautiful like
like a Hollywood Glamor Queen and
my Mother Wanted to Wear
Jungle Gardenia
The taste of Florida sunshine, its smells
And colors, orange blossoms against green
Leaves, evergreen in sunlight, wetly swells
Across the tongue and gives a fragrant sheen
Inside the mouth when flame vine nectar spreads
Throughout the senses. Foliage creates
Dark forms for Spanish moss to hang from heads
Of live oak trees. This all provides the spates
Of import like philosophy in years
To come—or what philosophy would want
To be, were it less grandiloquent. Tears
Of ancestors’ descendants are the font
That meanings come from in a day of heat
And shimmering wet. Their doctrines are complete.