The dirty love boat beached at Duvall Street’s eastern end.
All its voyages everywhere
The Final stop.
Key West.
Castro refugees fled Havana
Keeping boats afloat
with prayers, curses
And a lot of bailing.
Not one didn’t abandon ship
Once the dirty love boat stuck sand
Not one them are here now
And where are these pilgrims?
Not here.
Key West
The southern terminus of US 1
Two thousand miles south of Ft. Kent
Just ninety miles north of Havana.
The Mariel Boatlift ended in the autumn.
There never is an autumn in Key West.
The refugees came by the thousands.
Their abandoned boats are piled
Atop other boats in the Navy Yard.
The hippies, homos, and tourists ignore the newcomers.
They were transported by immigration to parts unknown
Free at last
To be detained in Arkansas.
Deep inside the Land of the Free.
Key West is a hole in time.
The town exists in many decades.
I wander the flowered streets
Flowing through times beyond my senses.
Glad to be away from Manhattan
And the cold.
My only conversation are with bartenders.
They have had enough of tourists
I stand at the end of Duvall Street
I sit on the stern of the love dirt boat
The wooden wreck smells of hope.
I gaze beyond the bikinied teenagers
On the beach
To the oil tankers on the Gulfstream
I stay to myself
Stranger to all the strangers
Ever watchful for an opening.