Breezy Point (Poem)

Breezy Point

    Queens, New York, November 2012

In the storm's surge
at high tide, fire jumps,

finishing what water
began. The burn blisters

in its new slip of snow,
and a smell of gas rises

from the debris field.
Siding has melted into alleys

of sand that slows
the picking up, the moving

forward.

You can't get to Liberty
from here now; the torch

is dark where there is
no safe harbor.

Wind has taken to sea
what remains,

and what remains is
no longer a house, no

more a home. Search it,
knowing this is it:

a heart-shaped photo
in a floating crypt,

cutlery fused to its wire
basket, soaked rugs,

spoiled food, pumps
snaking passageways

amid black mold bidding
to control the sheetrock,

and a slab of wood
urging a day at a time

to figure a way back in.

A Virgin Mary still stands
somewhere on Far Rockaway
peninsula, her arms open,

welcoming the people

with their cats and dogs
and birds, these pilgrims
with candles and hymn books

and cell phones.

Come Lent,
there will be more —

more ashes, more water
and the sounds going in
and out of the tunnels —

and Irish-Americans with nothing
will stand elbow to elbow, pass

from hand to hand the extra
collection plate: for every dollar,

a prayer, the sign of the cross.

Later, it will be the sky,
and the sand and the water,
and these again

that will deliver.

© 2012 Maureen E. Doallas