At the Anniversaries of our Fire

Disasters rise regular as our ever-higher tides.

I learn how a hurricane–

its eye, let’s call it a mouth, sucks up the sea’s water

and spits it out all over land.

It is all pain and all tenderness all at once.

You survivors hold chaos;

Must believe in star nurseries liquid as rain as fire

dim pulse of diatoms lighting as they

are moved by storm.

You, just washed and wrung out in yesterday’s floods,

I hear in your voices on the radio–

from Appalachia now–

the tremolo, tremble of grief and gratitude,

         grief and gratitude

         gratitude and grief

alternating as eyes blink, power lines and transformers spark,

ancient pecan groves fall.

It was your home that washed away among the others.

(don’t forget an undertow of shame and a sinuous sea monster

gray as smoke, bony fingered fins, who passes each night

in a canal deep in your dreams for we/you are alive

with the wonder of survival, the why and joy and misery)

I need to tell you the chop of waves, 

white caps flinging foam, and this time of you 

tumbling blind and drowning in the roil,

the up and down of it, over time become

slow swells you float over, bobbing

as if unsinkable, rise and fall and

yes, it will get better, it will stay better,

though sometimes, like this,

comes a sneaker wave and you/we are again

tumbling submerged—

maybe I/you will hear voices on the radio,

survivors of another disaster

but we will surface

and swim the up and down of it

as sorrow heaves and heaves

the never-ending up and down of it

and in the undertow, a world of lives.