Dark Morning

Morning is, an Indian woman said
as he passed her walking and as the wind
grew stronger–Morning is bracing, she said
as they met and passed. Out there on the gulf
Oya holds her mirror up to the world,
the world sees itself change and change again
as lightning jags the dark, the wind blows through
the city. The radio says, Get out.
Cars move like ants about to be rained on,
their homes destroyed yet again by the flood,
and no one has done all that was needed,
too busy getting and spending their lives
below and above the earth’s wet surface,
gassing up, getting out ahead of storm
and, why not say? hurricane, the ocean’s
revenge for all that man does to the earth,
the nothing that brings everything to death’s
wide door. Not like the one Juan opens now
to tell Adore what she already knows,
sitting and clasping her hands in the dark
praying rocking in her chair chanting words
he can’t make out nor would he understand
if he could. Her gods are her own, not his.
That woman he encountered on the street
might know. All he can do is stay with her,
Adore, be her Ira but be his own
story, be the storm until the storm ends.
Adore, he says quietly so as not
to stop what has taken so long to start,
Adore, don’t we need to go? She says, No.

(28 January 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander