On the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ida
A tunnel is a long window. The earth
is a match head you can raise if you pull
a street sign hard enough. Every drink
is technically flavored water. It’s usually right
to say You are lost, when you is so many of us,
when a dragonfly is a rising leaf.
Bird, spire, cloud, moon: up is where
we still look, not trusting the weather.
I am afraid to answer, so I ask:
is it over? Am I home when I walk home?
A shirt tumble-dries, and I watch it turn
into a diver, a crucifix, a band-aid stuck
on itself. Give me wind that isn’t storm
we say in the supermarket checkout,
faces turned up to A/C vents, losing
our balance and bumping each other
like drunks in a tilting canoe.
To fall into other falling things is standing.
