AntiDeLuvian

AntiDeLuvian

 

Dog days wax long,

Lamed ducks shuffle,

Calendars’ pages flipping like parties—

Like beach weddings,

Vows made, breaking like tides,

Flopping in sand-drenched slides,

Seeking and basking

In oases

Of shade          

 From the press of red heat.

 

Canicular

Coronas flare,

Weather accretes to a warming climate—

                Boiling the seas,

                Baking gulfs’ shallow shelves,

                Foresaking jetties’ sands,

                                On shifting shores

                                Sea-walled:

Nearly high-red enough.

 

Orange tans sprayed on with forty-seven SPF.

 

White-hot hospiced,

Hall-mazed oval,

Comforted in familiarity—

                Hope, a rally,

                Looking the other way,

                Glad-handing sycophants’

                                Facts, screeds, headlines

                                Ignored,

                Fingers waving red flags.

 

Warnings up-raised,

Categorized,

Sand-bagging and taking inventories,

                For insurance,

                For memories’ sake,

                Just-in-casing again,

                                Watching fair skies:

                                Waiting,

                Disaster looms, red-starred.

Yellow livers expose jaundiced tempers.

               

Breezes give to

Gusts, then bring gales:

Courses change prognostications—change—course:

                Will she, will she,

                Make a run for the coast:

                Twirl her periwinkle skirt for us,

                                Spin, Craze-graze us:

                                Remain strong,

                Bringing off the red waves.

 

Then came the sprinkling.

Then came the rain.

Then came the showers.

Then came the tsunami.

                Creeping from the Bay across roads,

                Filling ditches and canals,

                Overtaking yards,

                                Sweeping over the lawn

                                And crossing the precipice,

                                                Alas.

Then came the deluge.

Then came wishes’ shattered promises.

                Broken as soon as they were spoken,

                Watched, warned, fulfilled and real:

                                Disappointing,

                                Evacuating

                                Failed hopes:

                                We knew what we were doing.

Then came the breech

From all directions:

                Feckless.

Doors and windows gave

Way from each crevice,

Bubbling up

From the pipes beneath:

Gurgles and slurps.

We bailed and we pumped.

The tide-surge won

                And we, wet-kneed, failed,

                                                Alas.

 

First storm glanced, passed,

As was her want,

Tide extruding as if with bambooed straw,

                Draining last draughts:

                Leaving loss in her wake,

                A briny coating all:

                                Muddied linens

                                Salt-brack’d:

                Red-rusting, in and out.

 

Green with the envy of a child’s impatient exuberance.

                               

Tide sub-ebbing,

On Hydra’s back:

Pumped ditches and canals and knolls exposed.

                Little survives:

                Sunflowers, Peonies,

                Fruit trees denuded:

                                Beach-sand covered,

                                Settled

Along red-tided ways.

 

Work commences,

In come the troops,

Pulling out soaked walls to the bare pine studs.

                Yanking up planks,

                Daring a great drying out,

                Fighting mold against time:

                                Choking, gasping

                                For breath,

                Scrubbing wet floors and spores.

 

Second storm slams

Terror atop

Inauguration of stinging defeat.

                A new deluge,

                Unrepentant tempest.

                What survived has toppled,

                                Wind-strewn, beat down

                                Again:

                Destruction: red redder.

 

Blue-marbled in the hottest flames of self-immolation.

                                               

Returns return,

Back home again,

Post evacuations.

                Supervising

                The steady rebuilding-

                The not-so-steady pace:

                                Va, Vamonos,

                                Let’s go,

                Estoy viendo rojo.

 

Then came the con-men

                Disguised as saviors:

                Systems dismantlers,

                As if by spite:

                                Structures further softened.

Then came the grifters:

                The charlatans and carpetbaggers,

                Gouging and prodding.

Then came the raw predation:

                Making enterprise from disaster,

                                Fixing what wasn’t even broke,

                                Breaking what was already fixed.

                Costs inflated by desperation:

New walls,

New windows,

New doors,

                                                Inside and out,

New plumbing,

New roof,

                A fight against time:

                A fight against a new season,

New paint,

Gilding chrome,

                Gilding fixtures,

                                Gilding karats like buck teeth,

New floors,

New electric and air and insulation.

Then came the palmetto roaches,

                Moving into open cavities.

Then came the rats,

                Thriving in street-side piles of debris

                In-marching aggressively where doors were

 Askew and ajar,

                Sheltering, multiplying.

Then came the flies

When the rats died,

                And then the bugs, then the rats, then the flies again,

                                Mosquitoes ever-present,

                In a loop, recurrent.

Then came the fellow refugees,

                The neighbors and friends

                From down the way,

                                Reeling from their own losses,

                Escaping their own horrors,

                                With ice and cold cuts

and cool beer and warm baths.

Then came the resistance:

                The hardened experts,

                The second liners,

                                The outnumbered,

                                The good-hearted,

                                The builders-up.

 

Then came the new Equinox.

Then asserted, the peonies and bumblebees.

Then came the Vernal Solstice.

 

Earth tilts sun-ward,

Orion leads

Again, across the scorching summer sky.

Science warns us,

                Yet, we stand resolute:

                Sirius, Procyon,

                                Scolded and heeled

                                Fangs bared,

We, red-blooded, won’t hide.

 

Indigo bridged between terrestrial and cosmic.

 

Elect to stay.

Elect to fight:

Hunker and rebuild ad infinitum:

                In paradise,

                Aqua-bound, surrounded,

                Pre-Diluvian, yet

                                Still resolute:

                                White-Starred,

Blue-paneled, and red-striped.

 

Violet night sky, a canvas for a new-bowed promise.

 

                                 And the breeze is picking up.