A Southward Tide

Poems, essays and excerpts. A favorite quote or two. An observation. A compendium of imagery. A dream analysis.

Tag: Rain

December 12, 2013

Youth on the Odometer

If my past were a wide white highway
snaking down South Florida’s coast,
my memories would be the telephone poles
where I pinned adolescent fantasy,
mile markers gauging far-off wishes:
a strand of hair tangled in my bikini strap,
the aspiration of kilometers ahead.
And that translucent sky under banded rain clouds
was a dream I hoped to catch before sleep.

Was there a tiny seed of adulthood in that shallow breast,
navigating her beat-up beginner’s car?

My youth was wasted on an odometer.
Life came at the next stop:
Exit One to Miami,
down to the Keys,
90 miles to Cuba.

Fifteen years later, I drive down I-95
under a same slivered sky.

But now my day is no longer a distant destination,
a seventy-two hour drive, forty Marlboro Reds,
and twelve Diet Cokes later.

Today I don’t pin fantasy on metal finger rows,
speed limit amped to 110 mph,
psychedelic exhaust trailing behind.

My lane is wide and white.
I’m not ashamed to drive this slow vehicle, watching mile markers
lounge a road snaking between aerial ramps
as the purple clouds boil.

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October 8, 2013

An Orgy in Heaven

I love the rain. The thick oily rains of South Florida, the long growling baritones of thunder that roll off the ocean. As a child, I wanted to run wild through the lighting with bare feet, splashing through knee-high flood waters. I wanted to sit in the pool and face the heavens, the big beautiful metallic raindrops soaking every last thing on this good earth. Nothing was safe. Nothing was saved.

In high school, my favorite time to write was behind the wheel of my 1994 Saturn coupe after a tropical downpour, the slick black road reflecting a world under this world, the translucent Florida sky slivered below a band of storm clouds. I imagined stepping onto the asphalt and slipping into another dimension.

Yesterday the winds whipped up the palms, twisting them in angry caricatures The sky turned purple gray. From under my front porch where I sat with my two children, I watched the rains come a few pulses later, a wild-abandon dance-naked happiness surging in my heart.

I hope the rainstorms in heaven are terrifying and savage orgies, blasting and exalting the angels, demons and strange heavenly furniture.

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