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.