Shoplifting During the Hurricane

Contrary to the million postcards of winter reeds
lazily on the sunset dunes, surf fishermen in waders,
& blue crabs in red buckets, Nags Head, North Carolina
is not paradise. Dog-fighting kites may reek of soul
when they suddenly leap aboard the kill-devil breeze,
but they are anchored by a string tied to no one on the beach.
Our bodies are great & holy. They move like slow,
gray ships of rain & slip with darkness over the arc.
The tourists would finally leave the place all to ourselves.
The mattress saw a lot that week & wanted only
to be put to sleep. We ordered donuts on the cheap
& stole a thing we could not live without, a mug
made in the shape of a woman’s teat. The clerks were busy
boarding windows with youthful terror. But the day’s
oddly luminous expectation lit our way till we were done.
We knew it would not come before the sheets were cured
by salt & flesh, until the night would dream us met there
on the shore to return our last possessions to the sea,
even who we thought we were. Yet I am sure
I would know her. Know her or the stillness of her mind.
The shape she carved filled a seam cut through
a cyclone of sand. The lightning strikes were fireflies,
gigantic swells answered black & deep. My love is borne
on this uncertainty. The hallway long into the vanishing
& narrow at the eye. When the storm makes landfall
& begins to speak, it may lose its teeth & weep.