Sodden Spring
Charcoal parfait streaks silver horizon,
overlays ascending gold sun.
Lavender lupine explodes
from last week’s desiccated branches.
Wind wallops Monterey Bay
into navy breakers shedding spindrift,
flings careening sea gulls
from roiling skies.
In drowned garden
trumpet-faced jonquils
gyrate, break their own necks.
Thirty mile an hour gusts
buffet centenarian oak,
contort groaning cypress.
Vanquished freesia scatter white petals
onto soil transformed to soupy peat
by back-to-back storms.
Gutters swell, overflow.
Storm wreckage spins downhill
toward flooded intersection
where afternoon commuters
hydroplane along saturated asphalt,
pause, uncertain how to proceed
through a sodden, congested crossing
once controlled by now-powerless lights.
April 2023
.