I wrote is after Miami was deluged with flood water, as Irma barreled North along Western Florida. The news since — the second Mexican earthquake, the devastation in Puerto Rico caused by Maria, the war of words between Trump and Kim, another cop acquitted in the shooting of a black man — has not left me feeling more secure.
VENGEANCE
As Irma passes, and I watch on television
from my den in safe-and-dry Jersey,
water rushes down Collins Avenue,
where when I was a kid visiting my
grandmother I sometimes walked and stared
into shop windows to catch the reflection
of my fourteen-year-old self. Nerdy.
Unassuming. Weak. Alone on the avenue
I could be anyone. Strutting false bravado,
funky hat and t-shirt. Dark sunglasses.
Saw Silver Streak there that winter, thrilled to see
bookish-like-me Gene Wilder win the girl and save
the train. That theater’s likely long gone,
and Miami Beach and South Beach
and the intimidating sky line of the city
cast spells on the imagination. I prefer
memory to the incantation of money.
Everything is real estate in Florida.
Now everything is under water. Power
is out. It’s hot. The air is thick, unbreathable.
That’s what Chris tells Annie. They’re lucky.
A generator powers a small window A/C for relief.
Downed power lines block roads. Death toll hits
eleven in Florida, the news reports, but dozens
been killed as the storm blew through the Caribbean.
We don’t talk much about that, Irma leveling islands
we see as play lands. St. Martin, Barbuda, Cuba
left to dig out, just weeks after Houston
was submerged by Harvey. Battering after
battering, storm upon storm upon storm.
On Facebook, friends mark themselves safe. Irma
has passed, turned to rain in Georgia. Jose
hangs in the wings. Those summers and winters
in Miami, in Tammarack — crab-grass lawn
encircling my grandparents’ house felt like
dull little knives on the soles of my bare feet —
so long ago. My uncle was down there
one year, but I don’t recall the visit.
We saw old New York friends and I played
ringolevio with Gary in the courtyard
of his high-rise, a wild game of tag that
had us running up and down stairwells, through breezeways,
and into the summer dark. It rained everyday
at four, so we’d nap or watch TV for an hour
or less, until the showers ceased. They never
lasted long. Florida seemed exotic then,
and still does, brightly colored, and so much
more humid than even the worst Jersey summer.
Businesses battered in Deerfield Beach, awnings
torn, windows shattered. We were there last year.
The East Coast “dodged a bullet,” one mayor says,
but trees are down and power is out. Rain
is meant to be cleansing, washing away
the grime and dirt, the wickedness — or that’s
what the churches say, Noah’s flood their
reference point. If I was religious, believed
in a vengeful god, I might see these storms
as a penance, God’s anger made concrete
in a cataclysm of wind and water, might
interpret western fires, Mexican earthquakes,
tsunamis in the Pacific as “an end to all people.”
Punishment. But the corruption of our souls
is religious, false prophets preaching hate.
The sun is out here and I’ve covered the pool,
summer’s official close. The air is still,
a squirrel flees up the massive maple
that sheds leaves onto our patio. The dogs
bark, and my nephews, here to help pull the tarp
across the pool, recede into their phone screens.
I can’t help but think of the deer carcass
we saw on the highway near Freehold. Neck
twisted, gut sliced open by impact, entrails
visible. To the right, we see a herd of deer,
too young for antlers, just fawns, really.
They eat in an open field that’ll soon be shut off
to wildlife by houses advertised for active
senior living. Pave it all over. Chase the deer
onto the highways, watch the rains wash over
black macadam as the water seeks the soft,
sponge-like ground to soak in, drain off.
Florida was marsh, still is, one long target
on which the climate can exact revenge.
I may not believe in a vengeful god,
but I believe in science, and the planet
is heating up, storms growing stronger from the vortex
of warm ocean waters and rising atmospheric
temperature. Sea levels rise, wash tides
across storm walls and over city streets.
Collins Avenue. The Houston Galleria.
A Seaside Heights Ferris wheel pulled by undertow
into the Atlantic. State’s Island. Charleston. Boston
buried in snow. The planet adapts, pushes
species into extinction. It’s our fault.
Rain falls in the Carolinas. Storms expected her
on Thursday. The geese chatter above, head south.
And we wait, pretending the floods won’t come.
Hank Kalet 