Mend Your Broken Bow and Aim It at the Sky

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Stop staring, tapping, cooing at dark

rectangles devoid of light.

When I was nine, it blew past Cat 6,

the water and sky birthing Category 7.

You cannot text today, cannot surf

the web, cannot post a meme.

The panhandle was abandoned even before

it flooded.

Collect your screens. Someone will

paddle to the charger, return with
the dirge of the world.

The sea had only to kiss the water table.

All water touched by saltwater is saltwater.

Let your toes curl into the fresh skin
of the land, awash and overgrown.

The whole Caribbean emptied, every port, 

like the candy wounds of a piñata.

Ignore the footprints, tire tracks,
Wikipedia entries, farewell posts,
suitcases left open where they fell.

When we left, we could sail over homes in 

the Bahamas without touching the roofs.

Imagine objects you find have been 

left for you, and pour your purpose

into them.

So much was leftover, floating, like a giant 

bathtub filled with toys.

See the ghosts of our past—inflict

the firehose of their desires upon  

their lush lawns, already watered.

And America never opened its doors, 

but forgot to lock its second-floor windows.

But do not blame the dead, even if 

they knew better.

The last things they built in South Florida 

were warning signs: Keep out.

Meet them in the halls of your mind. 

Let them guide you from the bogs

of their failures and into the 

slipstreams of their contrition.

When we arrived, all of the dry Cubans 

had already left.

Do not begrudge the storm for 

surging, the equatorial waters for 

breathing life into your nightmares.

Snake meat is pre-flavored with Adobo, 

from wet kitchens they slithered through.

Be wind.

Never had I seen my parents so alive as 

when they got the fan boat working.

Find the cracks left between the
burn scars of Miami and Tampa,
flow into them.

We ran it up the River 95 to hunt eels in 

Lake Epcot.

Cool yourself in the shadows of the 

old world, warm yourself with the 

building of the new one.

We salted them on spokes of a cell tower 

shaped like a child’s drawing of a tree.

The land shrinks, you don’t have to.

In Cape Canaveral we slalomed missile 

row rockets, water-covered to their cones.

If they call you trespasser, break into

their hearts, show their sluice your

kayak made through the root maze

of mangroves.

I wonder if we ever leave the planet again, 

how many will want to go?

The world didn’t break in a day, 

neither will you.

From the top of Hobe Mountain, the world 

looks painted with a fresh coat of ocean.

The routes did not close, they 

changed, grew or sunk or swelled or froze 

or were hidden away—by 

centuries of growth, by quarterly 

earnings, by international agreements 

signed on the corpses of trees.

Language struggles with its lost inventions, 

like paper folded on itself too many times.

Make a bonfire of the past’s
promises, the unmade can be
remade.

All these changes, but from the moon, 

they all probably just look a little more blue.

Write your name on the world in the 

curlicue of cloud.

Swim, sail, or run, I will cross this 

borderless world, leaving water for sky.

When you share your path with 

others, they’ll call it civilization.