Post Disaster
We became Libertarians from necessity.
The storm uprooted each telephone; we woke
to hear the ground speaking to the water –
which has crept closer, toward the laps of its people.
The day after the storm someone found a steeple,
ghostly white. We placed it at the highest point.
It became our totem and when we tired
we stared at the spot in the sky where it pointed.
Our walls went up, then bits of terra cotta tile.
For a time it sounded like the land itself
were hammering against the sky. Neighbors
at times would shovel dirt to the side.
And their neighbors would laugh and shovel
it back. We worked it out, with time.
We raised our homes with the residue
of plastic bottles and wooden pallets.
The plumbing didn’t work so we became
plumbers; the power didn’t work –
so we became electricians; what we lost
we found in the empty places between.
The roads stopped at the last house.
So we began to grow what would grow.
Cucumbers and tomatoes filled the breezeway;
and daily we pushed back the cantaloupe runners.
We learned to like these meals, even
when ‘What’s for dinner?’ became the joke
on the street between familiar strangers.
And we heard a distant laughter
come from a community beyond our horizon.
We almost forgot the other towns were there.
The dogs ran free; their bays kept us awake
at first until the cries blended into the breeze.
There’s mold growing up the walls.
We worried when our youngster began
to sneeze, but with time that sound
also began to fade.
As did other sounds: the distant engine hum,
a lone siren, the bang of hammers, the crash
of falling cinder blocks, the shouting of neighbors,
the waves and continental drift.
Some times at night I can feel
the waves pick up up my body and rock
it gently as if the ground had arms
and the lemon tree sang lullabies.
We endure. We forget. We remember
what may have happened here.
We sing. We hear singing from a place
without roads that we do not understand.
