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.