After the storm • Photo: Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle

Poetry in Lit Up

In a Musing Mood

After a tropical storm

This is no wasteland,
this island aloft on a cyan sea.
A virescent light trips
on the command of a radiant sun,
the leaves of the laurel tree flutter,
Bromelia, birdlike,
lift their wings in anticipation.

Dead trees, live trees,
broad branches, bent branches:
Cyclops storms battered and bruised,
but not the sylphlike palms.

Will I, like the palms, perdure?
Will I bend back, or should I fear
the blows of another afflictive year?

What am I but half a man,
half-blind, half-deaf, half-lame,
a mind mired in memories,
but still wrangling
with words and images?

I remember a young woman
in a flowered dress
leading me by the hand
to a tropical aerie to envision
a home, a family, gardens.