quest
odyssey
deliverance

doubt
no
fire

14, 21
exodus

my cup overflows

waters
rest.

keep walking

--

We in South Florida pride ourselves on getting hit by hurricanes. We take photos of how bad it is and post it on Instagram with appropriate doomsday event hashtagging.

Riding these things out is like riding a bike.

If you can shop for Black Friday and Christmas every year, you can shop for this. Take pride in your water divination skills and line-standing endurance feats. We are the state of Disneyworld ride lines that wrap around corners in swamp heat, and lines of red light bumper lights on i-95 Monday through Friday: this is another day in the office!

Putting up shutters is like putting up Christmas decorations: we get creative

Like today, we wedged pink and blue floatation noodles against the frames of the windows in arcs resembling a post-storm rainbow. My 2 year old daughter said it was beautiful.

One day of this is someone else's seven months of winter. Remember, people evacuate to here annually! So do not feel bad for fleeing north to them.

The news keeps saying stay calm as they embellish how dangerous this storm ride is going to be like some death stunt on a David Blaine TV special. He went underwater in "Drowned Alive": he didn't drown. He got buried underground: he rose from it. Per the broadcasted hype, the payoff is we won't die!

Here's some good news: you can leave what's out of reach and in the sky to the heavens, and what's in your mind to the steps you took on the ground below: all doors closed, stuff unplugged, things that resemble missiles stashed in closets, flashlights ready like lightsabers to battle this named foe from above. It will hit the worried and unworried just the same, revealing the gas station line cutters from the people who help you with shutters; the faith from the fear of those who choose to pray; the human heart and its varying sizes as it beats faster with the darkening of the sky.

At least we aren't trees: they cannot hide from this revealing event. See how they all remain serene up until the second the wind arrives, leaves rattled only then, roots of varying depths being that which holds them together

either they bend with grace or they break.

On rainy days
I look up poems set in Seattle,
then look back at the rain set against the window

I imagine the water was carried here
from the shores of their bay
across Pike Place, through Belltown,
in buckets they use
to carry Pacific salmon off fishing boats,
or in lidded Styrofoam bowls used
to take out clam chowder

I practice walking in this manner, sans umbrella, through the parking lot of a South Florida strip mall.

When I reach the 24-hour Dunkin Donuts, past the laundromat and the check cashing store, I channel my inner Seattleite: poised in wet socks,
unrushed as the sips they take from their mugs when its **** pouring outside

I renounce sugary accoutrements and have what they're having:
Black coffee with a splash of rain,
A balance perfected on their slanted hill streets
that breed more poets per capita
than anywhere else in the country

Vegas can have its mirages in the desert
San Francisco, its gold bridge

I think I should just have this coffee,
and this rainy day
as the poem it is.

Some people climb social media mountain
and post photo of them on top for all to see.

I just be chilling phone-off on third floor
apartment porch,
walking down staircase to ground level
down sidewalk
beneath stone high rise, winter sky,
gas station coffee in hand, face buried in non-face book
about those sleepless mountain climbers above.

I cross street as they tread slopes like high wire walkers,
and I'm walking onto this train as they make tracks,
breathing in the Views gained from the heights
to which they've climbed as I yawn
on subway car underground and recline
unseen beneath hoodie,
them racing to the top
and me coasting south, still in book,
flipping non-web page to next chapter
of them turning to look down at the crowds below
and the tracks they made
as if imprinting their story in the blank pages of the snow.

My stop arrives,
so I tuck away book unfinished in backpack
while they hike onward up Facebook wall
and continue stamping marks on snowy phone screen in darkness,
as I brush past them on street level thru city night unnoticed,
and their eyes squint back in pursuit of the likes of me and the gazes of strangers the morning they return from king of hill conquest, welcomed by followers of their stories waiting to be liked and loved.

The likes of me walk on back up to third floor apartment,
book shelved,
dreams of mountains blurred in the chill
of morning fog on the window,
in the freeze of internet page on the. screen.