A place for my scribbles...poems, songs, stories, musings and ramblings.

A place for my scribbles...poems, songs, stories, musings and ramblings.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Surrounded By Palm Trees

I was going through some old writings and I found this poem and journal entry from one month after moving to the Florida Keys, so this would have been written in December 1997.  It's funny to try and put myself back to that girl, newly arrived on an island with the whole world waiting outside her door.  In some ways it seems like just yesterday, and in others like an eternity ago.  I have truly come to take it for granted that the sun shines most of the time, I see palm trees if I look out my window and the ocean if I leave my house.




Palm trees.  I am now surrounded by palm trees.  Every way I look, I can see palm trees.  The wind in the palm trees sounds like rain.  I love that. 

Mangrove trees are cool too.  Like the palms, they co-exist with the ocean and the elements, tough yet flexible, clinging to life and to the land against all odds.  Mangroves not only dig their roots into the land, but help to create the very land that gives them life.  In the movie Key Largo, Lauren Bacall compared herself and people who made their homes in the Keys to Mangroves, digging their roots in and becoming a necessary part of the land. 

I really love the Keys.  I am still in awe of the fact that my home is on this tiny strip of land surrounded by ocean on all sides, joined to the mainland by one road that is nothing more than bridges between islands.  Nearly 100 miles from mainland Florida, about 100 from mainland Cuba.  It’s like living on the edge of the world.  Frightening, exhilarating, and yet just life, we live day to day and work, love, laugh and play and in only one month have come to take it for granted in small ways.  This is where I live.  And I love where I live!


Song of the Sea

I hear the cry of the wind, hear the song of the sea. 
I feel that hot tropic sun shining down on me. 
Give me the wind in my hair, give me love, set me free. 
Give me peace in the shade of a swaying palm tree.

I've wanted to do this for years
I’m going to do it this time
I’m learning to hold back the tears
and I’m leaving old ghosts and fears.

I've finally made the decision
I’m sticking to it this time
my senses and intuition
are honed to a fine precision

There's a yearning inside me
that can only be eased 
by sunshine and sea
I can't deny, it’s meant to be
My soul needs the shade 
of a swaying palm tree

I hear the cry of the wind, hear the song of the sea. 
I feel that hot tropic sun shining down on me. 
Give me the wind in my hair, give me love, set me free. 
Give me peace in the shade of a swaying palm tree.


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