If only some conviction could ignite my core,
Some goal or trial I could grasp or could maintain.
A quest or burning question making me explore
And seek some oracle's illumining domain.
Would action seize me, restless, bored, and unenthused;
How passionless my torpid day-to-day untwines.
My petty wants and needs encircle to accuse
My enervated soul of perilous decline.
Ambition holds so little power over me,
Could oracles with all their secrets even find
The cosmic station where my swaying soul can be?
No search for truth invigorates my tired mind,
All mysteries as real as they are false can seem,
But disabused of falsehood still I'm wandering
The flattened plain of motivationless ennui;
Despite experience or knowledge squandering
That precious resource time: inert, unoccupied,
A paralytic mind concerned but locked aside.

I can't tell you why Florida has this temperament,
The sky won't belie its designs quite so easily
To me. Air once hot, humid all through the firmament
Then shifts, reappears crisp and cold, as if teasing me

And says: try as you might, my tropic desires hold sway;
Not old stars nor dates seasons change can tell me the clime.
So dress light til cold fronts appear on a random day.
And though Winter sang Summer well for some days, in time

The night ushered in frigid mornings more often. Chill
And frost hung around floors at dawn, and the light was clear
With pale, slightly pearlesque allure, and was softer still
In cost here than up north; invited a thought my dear

Of you and of me–lonely beds in a frozen place,
But soon there will be only warmth in our shared embrace.