Birth Place
I was born between the Indian and Banana Rivers in a place where the roots of Strangler Figs sink deep into the soil, thick and snarled as family history. It was there I took my first breaths of sodden Florida air, smelling the sweet, musty scent of blooming jasmine that twined up the latticework of my parents’ wooden house. It was also there, in that place, that I first heard the tender pucker of soft estuary water lapping against the sandy shore of our backyard. Deep within those brackish waters, fat manatees, the color of mother’s milk, frolicked like giant breasts alongside Spotted sea trout fleeing fishermen into the mangrove forests choking the underwater. It was there, too, between those two rivers that I first opened clouded eyes to drooping, waxen leaves outside our windows, salt-encrusted by the saline in the river water so that the leaves sparkled emerald-like beneath the febrile sun. Other sounds were those of my father leaving for work each morning, his eggshell, 1970 Karmann Ghia squealing sharply as he drove down our driveway to the street, off to the Cape, where he was employed as an aerospace engineer. Back then, Cape Canaveral was a place where Man’s dreams proved our God dead because God can’t live where Man breaks through cloud into the vacuum that used to be called Heaven. As my father would make his way down our driveway each morning, his car’s scratchy roar scared the cooked-shrimp-color Spoonbills off the lawn into one pink fan flared open against the sunrise. My father would not return home again until nightfall, when more sounds ate up the air, the insect scream of tiny wings beating into one blurred smudge of noise, whisking the night into a solid. In that heat, night did not bring rest, only restlessness inside my old pine crib, varnished like molasses, my skin blood-sacked by so many mosquitoes. It was also there between those two rivers that I first learned to walk and fall upon spongy grass. Hide inside discarded cardboard boxes. Eat mangoes, red juice dripping down my chin. My mother – how I would love to hear more stories, but she’s gone now, gone away into that vacuum above the clouds, her voice now but an echo of memory and she, mere ash in the ground frozen fast by October. New York, where my mother is buried, is such a different place than Florida.
I was born between the Indian and Banana Rivers in a place where the roots of Strangler Figs sink deep into the soil, thick and snarled as family history. It was there I took my first breaths of sodden Florida air, smelling the sweet, musty scent of blooming jasmine that twined up the latticework of my parents’ wooden house. It was also there, in that place, that I first heard the tender pucker of soft estuary water lapping against the sandy shore of our backyard. Deep within those brackish waters, fat manatees, the color of mother’s milk, frolicked like giant breasts alongside Spotted sea trout fleeing fishermen into the mangrove forests choking the underwater. It was there, too, between those two rivers that I first opened clouded eyes to drooping, waxen leaves outside our windows, salt-encrusted by the saline in the river water so that the leaves sparkled emerald-like beneath the febrile sun. Other sounds were those of my father leaving for work each morning, his eggshell, 1970 Karmann Ghia squealing sharply as he drove down our driveway to the street, off to the Cape, where he was employed as an aerospace engineer. Back then, Cape Canaveral was a place where Man’s dreams proved our God dead because God can’t live where Man breaks through cloud into the vacuum that used to be called Heaven. As my father would make his way down our driveway each morning, his car’s scratchy roar scared the cooked-shrimp-color Spoonbills off the lawn into one pink fan flared open against the sunrise. My father would not return home again until nightfall, when more sounds ate up the air, the insect scream of tiny wings beating into one blurred smudge of noise, whisking the night into a solid. In that heat, night did not bring rest, only restlessness inside my old pine crib, varnished like molasses, my skin blood-sacked by so many mosquitoes. It was also there between those two rivers that I first learned to walk and fall upon spongy grass. Hide inside discarded cardboard boxes. Eat mangoes, red juice dripping down my chin. My mother – how I would love to hear more stories, but she’s gone now, gone away into that vacuum above the clouds, her voice now but an echo of memory and she, mere ash in the ground frozen fast by October. New York, where my mother is buried, is such a different place than Florida.
