… sang Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, and her voice drifted out to Duval Street, where UD was walking.

This drift of Dylan made UD happy, and she stopped for a moment and sang along, and she kept singing as she walked on.

Duval’s dark caverns seem strange to UD. She doesn’t understand why anyone would want the inner depths when the sun shines the way it does in Key West in the afternoon.

But maybe these are bars more than cafés, and maybe people want to get drunk out of the sun.

After yesterday’s long snorkeling expedition, UD spent most of today inside, working.  Midday, she left to get lunch, and on her way to a little restaurant on the harbor (while she ate, she watched a man throw fish to a crowd of pelicans), she marveled again and again at the white palmy houses of Key West.

Some are yellow, and other pastels.

This is by Greg Little.

The houses on Key West are green retreats, small self-contained flowering jungles.  Hibiscus and coconut palms throng their facades.  Asian fountains pump water in hidden corners.

On the porches of these houses, cats curl on wicker chairs, and peonies color the front door.

Behind the houses are pools, not long, and rather narrow, but a perfect emblem of the ocean.  The pools complete the impression of a world boxed and shipped to the self-contained Key West houses.  Flowing and overflowing nature in the flowering palms; culture in the landscape and architecture; society in the pink bicycle that leans against the shed, and in the Conch Republic flag.

“We must be light!” writes James Merrill (whose own entry to Key West he recorded in Clearing the Title) in his poem about the Greek island, Santorini.  Human beings almost seem a species of light.  They brought light to the world.  They crave the light the world sheds.

He also means we have to remain as light – as young, clear, and buoyant – as we can, as long as we can.  We have to respond to the world’s overtures.