HURRICANE!

HURRICANE

Before you had blown out
I was surfing your jigsaw waves
storm-crazed six-footers
ripping sideways into the beach

Hurricane waves you carried me out
beyond my ego, my depth
I remember swimming desperately for shore
barely making it
panting
on the sands
vomiting
Hurricane, hurricane
hurricane

from my '83 chapbook Island Women, then as Island Women section in Foot Through the Ceiling, 1986

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Ed Baker's HURRY-CANE poem:
 Oct. 29/12

        Neighbors'

panties on the line
blowing in the wind
old man's prayer flags

storm getting worse here  looks like a direct or near-diret D.C. hit....maybe about 8 p.m.

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Oct. 28/12

Hi Ed,
Yeah, enjoy staying battened down with beer & chips. I grew up on Key Biscayne, a small island off Miami. KB could almost be considered one of the first of the Florida keys - it's south of Miami Beach. Great place to grow up - it was pretty wild, but now condos line a lot more of once pristine beachfront. Anyway, we had to evacuate several times because of hurricanes. One time we were in a small motel on the mainland & my younger bro & I decided to go swimming in the motel pool, much to the horror of the motel owners, who quickly put a stop to THAT!

But I did get my chance to risk drowning by hurricane about a decade later when we moved back to KB after living my hi skool years outside Atlanta, Ga. Can't remember the 'cane's name, but I went surfing on South Beach (not famous then - just a parking lot & a jetty). There was a cheesy surf board rental place, & the waves were storm crazy coming into shore after the cane. I swam out too far, got dragged out further in the undertow, & almost drowned. Barely made it to shore & collapsed vomiting on the sands.

My bud Jim Christy also had an adventure near that jetty - he & some fellow adventurers 'borrowed' a life guard boat or somesuch & tried to row to Cuba. They ended up stranded back at that same South Beach jetty!

I called my Mom yesterday, & she's fine ...no concerns re Sandy. She'll be 90 in 2 months, but she's an old hand when it comes to canes. Canes are to coastal southerners what snowstorms are to us Eskimos - a chance to skip work or skool & play at being hideaway hermits for a couple of days.


toast a cold one for Chase & me & the Storm Goddess!
Chris ... and Chase ... Wrfffffffffffffffffffffff!

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On 2012-10-28, at 9:34 AM, Ed Baker wrote:

the new model from NOAA ( (Micah works for NOAA  with the STAR section (google STAR))
has the track hitting Toronto in a few days ... any place to the norte-east side of the center is
going to get the worst   ....

will come into land Tuesday here the go up.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2277#commenttop

this Dr. Masters who does this site retired from NOAA  flew in Hurricane Hunters like Micah has.

STAR   http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/star/index.php

Micah and his STAR folks do the wind maps that are on this site
anything north of where this comes in will get the most badness
lots on this site.


white headed hermit
watching and waiting
for some huge storm

a bag of chips  a cold
beer the plot thickens

looks like hit will begin big-time  Monday-Tuesday-Wedensday  so far
70 or more people (so far) killed by storm ..   that's a lot for this kind of
storm....

AHHHH   Mother Nature.... now wonder I've concluded   many years ago 
and think
that God IS a woman....

some times she is a Stone   sometimes a Wild Orchid  sometimes Full Moon ...
and always I think of "her" via her given name(s).

et ceteras

Ed

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