Reportage

Outside my door there are things on the news. Neighbors
stagger on their walks home. A pajama-clad boy
in rain boots leaps onto a filthy tire and bounces there.
Makes you wonder. Makes you thick with grief for all
we stand to lose, stand up. Slow mucky
is the motion of sludge in a living room
buckets of sand removed in time for the wallop
of another mess, the weather. All that I could
remember, is not. I could show you me mocking the wind
arms stretched wide in the hazy damp breeze,
the salt from the ocean in the river swirling
behind me as the storm gathered.
Light agitation of the heart muscle
pumping blood with that same water in it. All
the mists, croaked in relief, storm water
come creeping into us, in our places we call
home, twisted. We, and I do mean us, this
pall comes into focus, a headache of light
when the light reveals the spanking of the day
with little to show but these dwellings:
hoses extending out from cellars burping
black water into the street, family photos
on the porch, curled and drying, artifacts
strewn on the cracked sidewalk, a damp bloated
dresser, moldy blue jeans, a pile of yellow
books fluttering in the wind as each page dries.