over lawns and parking lots and land
the black water rose,
rose higher than ever before,
downtown knee-deep in dark liquid—just
under an hour. I fled
through rivers of rain as the road disappeared
behind me in wake.
Three days of storm, three days of hard sun, then
at last the water slid slowly away, a great black cape
dragged under the clear blue sea.
I drove back home alone along the frazzled wires,
across the frond-strung bridge,
down drowned Denver Street, where broken palms
and dining chairs in ruined taffeta skirts
and sodden sofas turned upside-down listed on lawns
and tables and bins lined the curbs
and curtain rods speared from black trash bags
and tarps crumpled over soaked grass like giant placemats
matting undone cupboards, the blistered veneer,
children’s bright plastics, grimacing plush,
outside of every single house:
island turned inside out.
In the fetid puddle
at my doorstep, I envisioned the For Sale sign
just above the waterline and in the great wave
that might pour forth when I opened the door,
if I opened—I must open—I imagined catfish,
caught, as if in amber, with my books
and seaweed, earrings, the tea things,
all the old silences rushing past.
As a girl I lived here
in the monotonous salt-silk waves
as I lived in God. Sea in me
and I in sea, both of us mute,
and sand-burnt, sun-soaked, fearless,
twinned with our endless vision of home,
the distant shore.
She’s out too far!
Did anyone notice? No one
knew me like the sea.
I wore her around my waist
as skirts, mine to unfurl
if I wanted, only if I ever wanted.
