Hurricane Season

John Hennessy

Those red and yellow windbreakers signal 

 how little time's left for spending 

 and selling; signing sleeves unravel 

 the seams of a flattened horizon 

 as fast as hands pull wallets from pockets 

 or unstitch sow's-ear purses. Something 

sharper than hunger's razor divides 

 the boardwalk crowds confined to land, 

 demands the shucking of so many buckets 

 of mussels and steamers, sweet corn roasted 

 on oil-drum fires, consumes all the candy-

 and caramel-coated apples hawked 

by women walking carts back and forth, 

 and so thoroughly strips shops and stands 

 of totems（图腾） to guard against a winter's worth 

 of curses: flip-flops, boogie boards, 

 pinwheels and Frisbees, crabs in wire cages, 

 shells children must have painted. And one 

raving old man is driven to scan 

 his metal detector across the sand, 

 gauge（测量，估计） headphones' hissing transmissions, scoop 

 bottle caps in a sifter. How amusing we 

 must seem, sprouting full-grown from his head—

 surfers in wet suits saddling the chop, 

circling his shoulders with sea grass, 

 shock cords, the seeds of strange ideas 

 seized in our beaks. Until the wake 

 we scratch through muddied sets severs 

 connections, and we disappear behind darker 

 swells, mount, descend, and rise again.