Pond Brook, 2011
From suppertime till breakfast it rained
without cease, in sheets.
The water rose and rose like rage.
Some of us rode out to the Farrow Farm
to help Bill Jackman get the herd to higher ground.
The little stream on West Plank Road
swelled triple-fold and hurled itself head first
like suicide. It split the Martins’ house in two,
them watching from the knoll,
the children silent as Sunday.
That Wall Street guy,
who bought the Whitcombs’ place with cash,
just before the crash that felled the small
and lifted up those too big to fail, even he,
paddling his shiny kayak,
rescued Lydia Delaney off her roof.
Now he knows what we already knew.
Lydia never has had the sense
to come in out of the rain.
Along Pond Brook, Two Pines Trailer Park
washed away. Just like that.
They never should have let that outfit
build again down there.
Mary Beecher rushed her daughter’s insulin
to the Tears and Fears Café
to keep it cold until she got her power back,
the windows of the Tears and Fears
white with the breath of our town.
Andre cooked up a vat of barley soup.
Max put out a box.
You could throw a dollar in or not,
for the fields were fouled.
Machinery mud-choked.
Waterbury buried under water.
No one knew when the checks and food stamps
might be mailed again.
Ramona waltzed the floor, a pot of coffee in each hand
shouting insults without concern
for gender, class, or station.
This calmed us all.
The lowlands meet the hills at Main.
My mother used to say
If you are ever drowning, raise your eyes;
a rich man will be watching.
It’s true. I’ve never seen a creek run uphill.
But I have seen a ripple spread
all the way to the border.