At St. Pete’s Maximo Park, Amanda Hagood reflects on hidden landscapes and aging

JUMP! Said the markered note scrawled into the timber
Of the wooden tower overlooking the bay:
As the mangroves clawed at the subsiding shoreline
As the distant highway hissed at the horizon
As an osprey rode on invisible currents.
Another scribbled message cried out: PRAY, PRAY, PRAY.

A palm tree inclines its spiky crown, as if to pray
In an old postcard, among jungled timbers:
Beautiful Maximo, defined by the currents
Of Frenchman’s Creek converging with the blind-mouthed bay.
The happy snowbirds’ lens inscribes this horizon:
A paradise of sunset, shell, and shoreline.

I walked beside my mother. She scanned the shoreline
And leaned upon her cane, gazed down as if to pray.
A distant storm front piled clouds on the horizon.
Her eyes lit on a lightning whelk trapped in timber
At the base of a palm tree, exposed by the bay.
We traced its graceful curvature, felt time’s current

Electric through its whorls. I expounded current
Archaeological theories, noted the shoreline:
Thousand year old middens eroded by the bay,
Oyster domes assembled like penitents who pray
Deliverance from the flood. Another timber
Memo read: HONOR THE OCEAN. The horizon

Is dimmer these days; no more the bright horizon
That drew folks toward their golden years, like a current.
But something more fragile, wanting care. In timber’s
Or water’s recordings, that’s clear. We sat, shoreline
Before us, and maybe, not exactly, we prayed,
Raised thanks for our Pub subs, for this beautiful bay,

For the privilege of feasting where remnants of bay
Scallop and oyster stretched thick to the horizon.
Like the faithful frolfers, so we, ploddingly, prayed
For this muddy sponge of time, soaked by currents,
And the rapt beachcombers of a future time’s shoreline.
Proclaiming the wisdom in the tower’s timbers:

THIS SPOT RULES! we did pray. Let’s abide by this bay
Seek truths in its timber; dream beneath its horizon:
Ripples in time’s current, footprints on the shoreline.

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This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2025.