\nEntering The Highlands had a sort of purgatorial air, with police officers standing by road-flares reflected in the still-fresh puddles, waving cars away from a scene that looked like Godzilla had just finished shooting a Tokyo travelogue. We parked some distance from the town and had to make our way downhill toward Sunny’s neighborhood rather carefully. Live power lines still sparked here and there, and many buildings were surrounded with jagged triangles of broken glass from their busted-out windows. The Post Office, I remember particularly, was filled with undelivered bales of soggy junk mail, and the door was bending out of its frame like a playing card bowed between a dealer’s fingers.\n<\/p>\n
\r\nThe Post Office flooded-out--\r\nRainbow-finned mail\r\nNoses the bowed glass.\r\n<\/pre>\n\nWorkers passed through, already handing out MREs (meals ready to eat) to local homeowners whose food supplies had been rendered inedible by flood and mud. Boats tilted on front lawns, geese paddled down the middle of streets; many notable incongruities were on view as we worked our way toward Sunny’s small shotgun-style house located less than 100 feet from the ocean. We went in through her kitchen, and I helped myself to a few perishables out of the fridge while Sunny assessed the situation with her avuncular landlord–an importunately chipper Irishman named Mike.\n<\/p>\n
\r\nEven with no power,\r\nChocolate pudding\r\nStays chocolaty.\r\n \r\nHeading south--\r\nIn a conveniently flooded backyard,\r\nGeese float a few hours.\r\n \r\nDeep in the overflow,\r\nAn overturned birdhouse\r\nWarbles bubbles.\r\n \r\nStoplights out--\r\nThe ripped-down street sign\r\nBy the overturned trike.\r\n \r\nSeems like all the hurricane rains\r\nHave left the Atlantic Ocean\r\nJust as it was.\r\n \r\nWhere the flood has been,\r\nMud and destruction.\r\n--An unattended child\r\nPicks her nose.\r\n<\/pre>\n\nThere was a kind of homely beauty in the slovenliness of the neighborhood–an ugly uncle who lets his toenails grow, but who looks you in the eye when he shakes your hand hello. The people of the town, freed from their usual duties, and taking up new, more urgent tasks, seemed to have more than a few moments of unexpected contemplation foisted upon them–like refugees who notice the delightful fragrance of the pine-tree air freshener in the rescue truck that escapes the notice of the truck driver who hung it from the rearview mirror in the first place. To be a stranger at home is the essence of poetry; and these flooded-out folks found themselves reluctantly rushed into their usual streets which had suddenly taken on the scary characteristics of Dante’s infernal stanzas. Even the birds, having the somewhat officious appearance of housing inspectors, looked twice from the mezzanine of an intact rain-gutter before returning to their storm-struck nests.\n<\/p>\n
\r\nFrom an intact rain-gutter,\r\nBirds eye their storm-beaten nests\r\nHanging on broken branches.\r\n \r\nReturned to her drowned house,\r\nMy old friend cries hard tears--\r\nFlood after flood.\r\n \r\nNobody says much--\r\nCarrying the washed-away porch steps\r\nBack to where the porch had been.\r\n \r\nHolding a busted broom,\r\nThe older lady fits it carefully\r\nInto an overloaded trashcan.\r\n \r\nVisiting with my friend--\r\nCheerfully she points out where\r\nThe sea has visited her kitchen!\r\n \r\nAll across the flooded floor\r\nGalaxies spin and swirl....\r\n--Fresh mud!\r\n \r\nYou can see here\r\nHow this big tree and the power line\r\nPlayed jump rope!\r\n \r\nIn the flooded street,\r\nSewer lids quietly become\r\nBubbling fountains.\r\n<\/pre>\n\nThere were many picturesque scenes to be viewed when walking through the newly configured town, the sidewalks squealing under your shoes. Here, a teenage girl pecked quick at her phone, annoyed at her lack of incoming texts. Just across the way from her, and still wild about the hurricane, skinned-kneed kids screamed and stomped in every puddle. Their spirits were as whirly as the leaves blowing down the broken streets. At the occassional functioning filling station, long lines of mendicants stood carrying red gas cans; a whole tiered class system arose between those who tended small electric generators in their basements and those who did not–or could not. Charles Dickens would have understood the social implications of these equations of capability and suffering. It was a most sad case, again, to contemplate in the increasing cold of the late evening–however purely the stars shined down.\n<\/p>\n
\r\nThe gardener goes by\r\nWith his wheelbarrow\r\nFull of shingles!\r\n \r\nWith a wet broom\r\nWe sweep the flotsam\r\nFrom the car roof.\r\n \r\nA tilted hat\r\nPerched atop the rubble--\r\nThe roof of a house!\r\n \r\nMy homeless friend,\r\nAfter so many dull nights together,\r\nI am finally glad\r\nOf your company.\r\n<\/pre>\n\nThe next morning after our visit to her muddied and messed-up home, Sunny drove off to storm-battered Staten Island for what turned out to be several unexpected days of work and sleepovers. I kept expecting her back after that first night, and that expectation whetted my sense of isolation, of being cut-off and incommunicado with the others of my world with whom I had formed fragile loyalties.\n<\/p>\n
\nFor the next few unplugged days and overcast nights, only the radio spoke to me. It was, frankly, quite surprising–I was often better informed concerning the status of the overall recovery effort than my few remaining neighbors, who had family and friends stuck in the nearby buildings with whom to talk.\n<\/p>\n
\r\nGovernor Chris Christie\r\nAt the disaster press gaggle,\r\nYelling encouragements!\r\n \r\nGeraldo on the radio\r\nOutdoes\r\nThe sirens.\r\n \r\nOnce again, the moon\r\nSwims over the sea,\r\nConfusing the tiny fish\r\nHatched during the hurricane.\r\n \r\nClear night after Sandy--\r\nOnce again I can feel the moon\r\nAgainst my skin.\r\n \r\nAfter the disaster....\r\nWe shrug\r\nBack into our lives.\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering The Highlands had a sort of purgatorial air, with police officers standing by road-flares reflected in the still-fresh puddles, waving cars away from a scene that looked like Godzilla had just finished shooting a Tokyo travelogue. We parked some distance from the town and had to make our way downhill toward Sunny’s neighborhood rather […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1728],"tags":[1765],"class_list":["post-2947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hurry-up-hurricane","tag-hurry-up-hurricane","category-1728-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7740,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions\/7740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}