I am off to Port St. John

—after Manuel Bandeira

I am off to Port St. John,
over there, I have clear water near Ponce de Leon.
I go shuffling through the northern clouds, 
gliding in a long, loose line, with ibis mending nets under and around me.

I want to love autumn
as the sensitive birds of the new world love autumn, 
roaming the cattail marshes and the hammock citrus groves. 

I collect myself, 
standing still on the white shallow sand
and atop the coquina rocks.

I am off to Port St. John, 
where huge congregations of ibis gather near the river beaches, 
roosting at dusk in an oak live tree blanketed with moss, 
whitewashing the trees to demise the human pangs.

I am off to Port St. John, 
over there, I'm good mates with the lonely scarlet ibis near the Fish Bay. 
With him, I'm going to learn how to face warmer hurricanes and blue-green

algae blooms.

ROSE ANGELINA BAPTISTA

Rose Angelina Baptista is a Brazilian-American writer based in Florida. Her poems have appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal, LitBreak and Gavea-Brown. Her unpublished chapbook, “Rio D’Ais: Poems of the Indian River Lagoon,” received a gold Royal Palm Literary Award from the Florida Writers Association in 2023.