Marjory Heath Wentworth

Hurricane Season

The blood moon thirsts.  All night,

listening to unspoken prayers,

she tugs the sea beyond itself

until redundant waves retreating

wash the yellowed marshes clean.

In the heat that follows too much rain,

people crowd the churches.

On this September Sunday morning

their hymns begin to rise

and slap the winds still raging.

This is the music of bones

entwined in mortal language -

words of those who know the wind

erases every footprint carved in earth

where water, tired as a dreamer,

circling beneath oblivious clouds

blurs the variations painted on each human face.

Into the open womb of the sea

descend the ashes of our sins.

What keeps us here?  Not gravity

or light, but rust on fences, holding

every house of swollen wood, an ache

a tooth, the day moon adrift

grinding tiny islands down to bone.