by Mary Paynter Sherwin

recovering from a long illness,
the breath still comes in a hiss.
it’s a kneeslapper.
the latest in a great long while.

the hurricane makes it this far.
ash your cigarette into the swamp,
gentlemen dance around trees,
because there is no football this Saturday.
the water came too fast.
our neighbors wear feathers in their hair on sunnier days,
before they lose children at summer picnics,
and they reemerge blistered with sunburn,
sticky with hornet stings.

we wrestle and kiss in the same breath,
push with holding hands, this river violence
filling the harvest moon, long after hanging sheets,
when the heat of the dryer is too much to bear,
cookies coleslaw pork ribs ready at four.

two weeks after the wind picked up,
we taped the windows, canned ham, flashlights and batteries.
the ambulance arrives in thirteen minutes
after a window shattered,
the bleeding, the eyes, stumbling.
they were nearby.
we could have waited for hours.
this luck saves a life, stitches a newspaper story across his face.

children are dancing in ugly shoes.
lawnmower and the company car, police and immigrants,
starlings and robins, partly sunny, scattered clouds,
the scar painted with a chain of stars.
his head resting on my shoulder.
I have sent my children to war,
and you think my home will not flood.
you think the oven heats itself.