Southern Sunrise

Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, their balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.


Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.


A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
Of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun.


- Sylvia Plath