Tropical Depression
This poem was first composed in October of 2003, one year after Ryan killed himself. Hurricane Isabel greeted us before we’d even left home, and it seemed far less threatening than facing a return to the Outer Banks leadened by his memory.
An earlier version was the closing poem in Love in Winter — Missing Ryan, self-published in 2004.
He dreamed for she he could not touch
I yearn for who he could not be.
Tropic Depression
I. Isabel’s Coming
Until this season closes down
with frost these stubborn blooms
set low beside a cottage door
will yet renew themselves
pursuing favor from her hand
my gardener or perhaps the bees
determined by their seedings
take their season as it comes
like single purpose youths they dance
scratching tiny marks on time
one season for a life
one breath then blown away.
She sought to make her home just here
a welcoming beneath the shade
a retreat where we might live
by water and the birds of hope.
The dream could be intriguing
a verdant place we’d set to make
the cottage modern
with a touch of Sissinghurst.
Wild chance — a changing wind
my life lived small in ignorance
left stranded in a field of rock
an ocean’s roar receding.
II. Heading Out
Heading out the dogs engaged
they danced just shy of nervous yet
were curious to witness
how mad the striding man might go.
A storm from Haiti crawling north
and shortly we were bound for Duck
— you couldn’t plan on these
the islanders just shrugged.
That strip of sand between
the Atlantic and the Sound
too fragile — I’m too fragile
one more broken creature.
The elder trees in canopy
across the cove seemed not
benign, those stoics soon to be
plagued by devils riding winds
the maladroit weather lingering
in middling waters last week
–just behind us one tree went
against his brothers to the ground.
Odd habit — peel a weather eye
judging just how far from shore
was this sideways monster running wild
spinning from old Africa.
What trees survived this pummeling
winter soon would weigh with snow
and ice, with blades of crystals
to stave through wood too old.
Sheltered under oaks as stout
gives pause when violence strikes
the roof like gaming shots
scuffing god’s best velvet.
Windows leaking sideways rain
— wind would take a roof as soon
a tree, so close the piney breath
Aeolus loves us till we choke.
What wisdom’s in the age of trees
the limbs were bent like broken hearts
slapped down love, no play in sight
pleading grimly dawn might come.
Life holds no privilege on this rock
we do not know; it does not care
prospering breezes yesterday
will render someone’s night to shreds.
Dogs collected in a cottage
outside birds were huddled.
DC’s finest had been kissed
excused and sent on home.
Aft and stern the boat was hitched
clambering a line the chimes
went straight against their chains
high hat down to baritone.
Isabel’s plowing atmosphere
was boiling not far south
this migraine freak arriving
was aiming for a favorite haunt.
III. One Day Before
Riding Interstates the day before
making what a living means
with silent words past Blacksburg
and a morgue in Christiansburg
alongside fleet-strength power crews
invited to the hurricane
Ya’ll rolling for the storm?
I’m driving for the money, dude.
the roadman spoke of home
Be back Sunday, Jo, I swear
for football, lord it’s time
your brother brought the beer.
Life’s gamble is a workman’s
his time on someone else’s clock
so he plays it like he’s fully free
choosing freedom for his heart
unfamiliar with a sailor’s lore
dumb reckoning past Hatteras
might hang him on the closest shoal
to find old age worse than that.
Soon with wires on the ground
weathermen talk to short wave.
Seems George II has declared
voltage for the lobbyists
so crews are driving to Great Falls
hell bound north from Tennessee
Won’t be fresh ice tonight, m’dear
your tequila will be warm.
IV. Faith of My Mother
Before this season closes down
days hence and if our too thin ribbon
caught between survives — it hadn’t
been grinded flat — we will
attempt a southern coastal
life with miles of beach ahead
with huskies by an ocean
running far as hearts can break.
Fading in off-colored light
above this suspect panoply
madness building into night
though Hatteras would be worse.
Faith of my mother had confused
my youth, that a god could be
benevolent, a father to us all
when devils dance with minions.
Gambling with blind chance
candles flair in darkness, die
reading by erratic light — power’s
failed — a will long drained
sorting truth from willfulness
arguing the Devil’s cause
still wanting angels to caress
we huddled creatures
underneath mad trees in this
temporal build of wood and glass
we have each other have no more
before this night’s long fury.
V. Mother to the Storms
North Africa — if one could stand
to face migrating dunes to breathe
the air once Suleiman’s
on a terrace by the Golden Horn
exceptional by all accounts
wreathed in glory won by war
now but remnants of a past
erased except in history
lost across the desert miles
west to where we worship, posed
infidels to our parents’ dreams
spending all our children’s wealth
squandering a riot’s heat
failing tests of wisdom til
water’s lapping at the ledge.
Witness to the play between
a culture and its progeny
grown fat beneath its shelter
dismissing Ozymandias
we are what we were born to.
Our mother to these storms
how many ways has sent her best
her cradled energies her cursed
though an ocean lies between.
Danse macabre as they do
the bending trees comply
marionettes, poor drunks
beyond full vertical.
Which to credit wind or branch
for this fine amplitude
high C screaming diva
the unlit darkness faintly
backlit by a sky too choked
for crying. Boom box playing
Chopin’s cello in her hands,
du Pré was in her final act.
Wild winds run the scales the while
we will lie down beneath the trees
gathered in a single room
counting on the luck of things.
This storm will do its mauling
if we protest or we plead —
it can’t touch his immunity
a soul already taken.
VI. Aftermath
In the local aftermath, debris
leaf piled decks and floating
tangled turbid water
ruined trees left dangling
drowned across the cove
startled in their vertigo
good for snippets lasting cocktails
through Barcroft dinner parties.
Though freighted youths and wait staff
retirees at eighty fled
when Isabel came churning
close up all that witnessing
the sawing at old wood and how
when living seemed tangential
left them questioning the bones
it was a matter not of scale but kind.
Scoured by the waves down south
new inlets rent poor Hatteras
Route 12 was buried, gouged
gone sections pummeled sideways
crazy tiles of asphalt
like ice floes in the melt
sand and shingled roofs, whole
houses joined the mix
up and down a well loved coast
wind and waves had worked good joints
apart, fatigued and brittle things
like so much wasted effort
dropping failures into heaps
life scurrying from the front
else the ocean winning free
my poor Ocracoke of chimes
with Key West slyness near
where Blackbeard ate his last.
On previous excursions it had
seemed in those days riding
the ferry bright adventure
to an island wanton and
removed with smiling dogs
further south of most their kin.
The ferry wasn’t running
after twenty feet of ocean swells
had rearranged the dunes
devils laughing looking on.
VII. Crossing Albemarle
Across the Sound a western sun
in soft strokes a painter’s graze
lit low clouds in the aftermath
chopping waves. The Outer Banks
always seemed a time apart
floating in a dream offshore
now subtle hues were broken
ruined like a heart pulled down.
Past summers we had lingered
breathing ocean oxygen
we’d run the coast with dogs and
Ryan learned to stand on waves
innocents in such a place
pretending heaven by the shore
having never known such violence
to the song of who we tried to be.
Evening waves still run to dusk
and water rouged from sunset
scattered lights, now coming home
no longer seems quite possible
since he’d laid his board to wave
with late sun lancing waves.
This ocean is an emptiness
though where else can I stand?
Broken hero with his dogs and love
seeks to know the rest of life
though it cannot cure his heart
nor hold back this tide’s return.
An old companion, helpless
watching people checking out
sooner than they come they go
a small boy once took note
leaving just the room key
and a blinking message light.
Coming back to Albemarle
in a red sun’s signature
standing lookout on an ocean
gray as foam, a sky of shades
and waves flattened to a mist
of lace against the sand
far as the horizon, fading
whitecaps showing
and pelicans in formation
flying down the coast
who are no way turning back
before this gale force evening
and at that rate should make
Hatteras by moonrise.
VIII. Witness
Seagulls on a Sunday run
angling a line for lift
again they cruise the shoreline
south against an easing wind
past gnawed and worried stumps
where beach stairs once stood proud
and the ferry ridden last year
south to Ocracoke for chimes
runs past ruined headlands
leaving further north for Hatteras
to bypass broken pavement
breached easily by overwash.
What wildlife rode it out were
who could swim or fly away,
staring at that grayness,
mean and raw indifference
witnessing the waves dump shells
with broken piers and ocean trash
reminded and remembering
a hope entailed erased.
Ryan, two, quite voluble
a boy of stout opinions
his first summer cottage time,
Kill Devil was much cheaper then.
The crabs were fresh and free and I
set about with pots for steaming
when he heard the frantic scratching
at his brother’s explanation
asked why I was killing them?
Following a flashlight road
walking toward the evening Sound
we two released survivors there.
Another line of pelicans
is pacing south, the waves are slow
and lazing and the sun is fled
I have this bitter week to go.
October, ’03
