Mira Lehr

The text reads: "If I should leave this land and not return, the colors of its tropic dawns would burn Behind my eyelids like an opal’s flames, and I would hear the music of the names That Indians gave to rivers, lakes and streams Like Tom-Toms pulsing. Sometimes in my dreams I’d seek a certain secret jungle place where orchids, tangled in the jungle lace, are like bright swirls of vivid butterflies. I’d hear the tropic night alive with cries of birds and prowling creatures of the dark. I’d see jeweled lizards racing on the bark of ancient trees gray-veiled with Spanish moss. I’d see the sun reflecting golden gloss of citrus groves and sense the rich perfume That scents the silver of the moons that loom above this savage land, a thousand scenes would crowd my memory book …the living greens of forest and the changing blues of seas. A tapestry of treasured memories. One picture, more than all, would seem to hold This land’s soul enframed in tawny gold, a picture that will ever haunt my eyes. Wrought-iron trees against vast stained-glass skies. Florida skies are vast and wide and never two days the same. A panorama that shifts and blends with colors that have no name."