It’s spring in Miami and everything is
leaving. The snowbirds who flew down for the winter
with the actual birds have packed their suitcases
and locked the doors of their vacation homes.
The spring break students have stumbled
off the beaches and exchanged beer and bathing suits
for books. The cormorants and grebes, moorhen and heron,
even the pebble-faced, green-backed Muscovy ducks
bid their northern brethren goodbye.

Only the delicate white ibises still pick their way
among the blades of sawgrass, looking for fat bugs
to feast on, cooing gently at each other,
the neighborhood cats sleep in shady porches
as the squirrels search for their secret caches,
and I rake leaves into piles beneath confused trees
that seem to sense all the leaving in the air,
blushing in embarrassment and baring their branches
even as they bear new buds, small and tight and green.