Hurricane: A Hard Birth

Hidden in the woods, a creek presses against its banks. It swells like a pregnant woman: ankles puffed up like balloons, veins ready to burst. The earth tosses back damp hair, grits her teeth. Water pushes up from underground to meet the sky, bursts over dams, rushes forth from every corner, swirling in muddy eddies of meconium and blood.

In Cuba, the sea rises to swallow a wooden house. In Texas, the highway disappears. That long black scar in the earth is erased, smoothed out into a gray field of tree limbs, guard rails, and mud. In Michigan, two men paddle through roads turned to rivers, canoe slipping smoothly beneath a red light. In India, the earth is a lotus flower floating on the sea, constantly created and destroyed.

We have tumbled out naked and dazed, tossed headfirst into the blinding sun. It is quiet now. Blinking, we hug our cold, bloody bodies and long for home.