A storm breathes—down our necks,
yes, but also oxygenated
by its warm air intake. As it knocks
about the Bahamas, ours is bated;
fresh water “flies off the shelves,”
and the coast by decree evacuated,
for we will not recuse ourselves,
not even at the peninsular end,
where the land mass calves.
Meanwhile, who can gainsay this friend,
the rosy armadillo, that surfaces?
And this katydid big as my hand,
greener than cotyledons; surpluses
of dragonflies with hematite
ball-bearings for eyes, and tortoises
that one must run out to in the night,
in the lightning, to save when they’ve
dropped, as from an Aeschylean height,
mid-crossing? As likely to wave
a flag of surrender as to appreciate
my dash into the road, the autoclave-
like contraption hissed in its breastplate.
I delivered it to the long grass
just as the ground issued an intimate
low Florida mist like laughing gas
that hides the passage from this world
of cold-eyed underlings in balaclavas.
