Main Street in Creswell was still flooded days after Irene. Photo courtesy National Weather Service.
You spun yourself From thick strands of salt water And a fever in the tropics, wove Your fabric coarse Around the edges, your eye Opening like a net Cast over Cape Lookout.
You tossed your arms And pulled the sound over us Heavy as a widow’s shawl And we watched the water skirt Up our streets, dragging boats From anchors, ripping live oaks And cedars from the seams of the earth.
You left us with only the veil Of midnight for cover, scraps of glass And plywood scattered like ashes Over our lawns. You left us With morning, a day To set things right, the gauze of sunlight Settling over us.
This poem was published in the Holiday 2011 issue of Coastwatch.
