Florida Girl (Edit 1)

[dukealien]

Unchanging as our seasons
Florida girl you never thought you'd be
our most ardent defender
nor unwilling hostage
but here you are.

Clinging to steamy sidewalks,
radiating through the soles of your vans
("my body wasn't made for this!").

Warm seeps in
through the wooden skeleton
of your mostly concrete home;
Concrete and wood,
the anthem of here.
Concrete plazas,
somehow glowing in the sunset,
crumbling wooden docks
perched at water's edges, resting sleepy and uneasy
to be scrapped away next hurricane season-
or perhaps stand strong-
Walked on by all manner of gulls,
pelicans, egrets and spoonbills
in the meantime.

Unchanging, you are
as the Florida Fall:
putting forth the effort fall here requires
in spirit, in cider and cinnamon sticks,
avocado vomit from a jack-o-lantern mouth
your friend dressed up as her 'ideal self'
your ex and me in the same pumpkin shirt
(whoops).
Florida's Fall
has little to do with Florida at all
And you pull it in close like a hug.

Unchanging as the spring and summer showers.
Some torrential,
everything but two feet ahead
obscured for now,
mud puddles danced in by rain
splatter themselves on the wet engine-heat
of cars who've learned to drive straight through this
half-blind.
Or the kind without a cloud in sight,
sprinkles from nowhere,
God flicking her wet hands from above;
Where do these happy tears come from?

And where do you come from
Florida girl
Unchanging as those few weeks
of still, wet, winter air
biting down in spite of a sky that smiles blue,
happy to host this traffick
of touristing bluebirds,
cardinals, woodpeckers and northern pintails.

Cupping in your hands a life
that pools up, is full, spills out again,
ever unchanging in the staleness and the newness
it brings to you and lets seep away.
My favorite in all this
is when you take one of those Florida hands
let it drip dry
and reach out to hold mine.

Gentle and well-observed.  In mild to moderate critique, first a few punctuation notes.  In S3 L3-4, "Concrete" should not be capitalized after semicolon; also S3 L10-11 there should be no capitalization after the em dash.  And (one of my favorite, but still active archaisms) S4, last two lines, "her" refers back to God and should therefore be capitalized (and the following line should not be capitalized, again following a semicolon).

With those nits picked, a few phrases approach cliche - "ardent defender" and "putting forth the effort," for example.  Think of different ways to express these ideas:  you have a gift for original and arresting phrases such as "resting sleepy and uneasy," "avocado vomit," and "God flicking [H]er wet hands."  There are others.

Finally, the rhythm is a little jumbled - quite fitting for theme and subject, but (in my view) harmful in spots.  For example, I can't help being slightly dissatisfied with the last line:  can't find an aloud reading of it that matches what it's saying.  Could be the phrasing:  a break after "out" seems to help.

Other critics will, no doubt, recommend removing some material, and they're right.  But there is about the present length a certain laziness (in a good way) that fits the theme.  Perhaps it needs a different organization or sequence of its ideas.

Playful and pleasant:  looking forward to edits.