Ploom #008

I ate a sloppy joe at Sloppy Joe’s,
the Key West bar that still-young Hemingway
got drunk in every day. I wrote no prose
but drank each night to coax the muse to stay.

I held a four-foot alligator in
the Everglades: the keeper kept him cool
and dull, a rubber band around his thin
toothed snout. I? Pink and grinning like a fool.

I picked up shells along a Gulf Coast beach:
the lightning whelk, the fighting conch, the clam;
saw dolphins cutting through the scud; heard screech
of gull and boom of surf. I never swam.

A tourist only viewing life, you see?
It’s what I was, and am. Will always be.