Winter - Fort de Soto, Florida

[Jimmy O'Connell]

Winter - Fort de Soto, Florida.

Sea terns hunt by white beach edges.
Swept steadily by gulf winds, they
pitch and turn for the kill in a wing
flutter of hovering poise; judge carefully

their stuka-dive abandonment of flight,
as they climb again and again out of the grey sea,
ever flapping across winter’s pale sky,
hunting sea morsels into sunset.

I wonder at this site Lee had chosen
to defend the bay, a Spanish discovery,
once a US Army fort camouflaged
among sand dunes and sentried palms,

and shiver at reflection -- what soldier
would have desired an outpost of mosquitos,
summer’s sticky sweat and winter’s long
loneliness? This, once, must have been

a station of demotion, perhaps a military
punishment, a banishment to the continent’s
edge. I guess these great guns were never
shot in anger. What enemy ever attacked,

ever sailed into these waters? And what rituals
had they conjured to mark time and occasions
besides their endless military drill? Cocktails
in the officer’s mess; baseball perhaps? And

the wife, waiting for the weekly mail,
the Sears-Roebuck, a new hat, a message
from home. Did she crave her husband’s
promotion; or wait with carefully calibrated

patience a transfer by dint of seniority? But
at sunset, in white linen, she too, as she swept
the endless blowings of gulf sand, must have
watched in a moment of quiet poise,

sea terns hunt by white beach edges.