Poetry Monday: "Clean Sweep"

I don't have much blogging time today.  Publix has said they will have day old baked goods for our campus today, so I'm going to leave here at 5:15 so that I can get the baked goods and get to spin class.

I'm also checking the 5 a.m. hurricane update.  I'm fairly sure we don't need to worry about Hurricane Florence, but I just want to be sure.  We're still a ways out.

And of course, there are the hurricanes behind it.  I read one weather forecaster say that he doesn't ever remember a peak of the season quite like this one (although 2004 seems to come close).

Yesterday I wrote this Facebook post:  "I couldn't resist--between afternoon thunderstorms, I walked to the beach. While it's not the smooth, glassy surface that we usually have, and not the tropical blue color, it's a relatively calm sea here in South Florida (Hollywood Beach, almost to the end of the continent, but not quite). Yellow flags are flying at the lifeguard stand, but that's not unusual. No strange animal behavior--unless you count the tipsy tourists on a late Sunday afternoon. No Hurricane Florence related impacts here, not yet."

On the walk home, I thought about one of the early hurricanes we experienced here, when we were still renting a duplex in the fall of 1998.  We had a close brush with hurricane Georges that went south into the Keys.  The surf was the highest I've ever seen at Hollywood beach.

Here's a poem that came from that walk which I still like. I look at my current poems and see how much I've grown as a poet. But I'm glad that poems like these still make me happy.

Clean Sweep


While other folks board
up their windows,
she opens hers wide
to the hurricane winds.

She goes to the beach.
Unlike the surfers,
she has no interest in waves
that crash against the shore.

The sand abrades her skin.
The wind sweeps into every crevice.
Behind her, transformers pop and crackle.
Energy explodes.

Even though the palms bow
to the storm, she lifts
her arms above her head,
struggles to remain standing.

That night, she sleeps
soundly. Even though the wind
howls and hoots and hammers at the walls,
she breathes clean air and dreams fresh visions.