storm surge

words flood in like hudson waves lapping at hudson street where they don't belong. cascade and spill and flow. I never knew how like water words behave.

torrents of words trying to make sense of so much darkness so much wet.

after two nights of vivid dark & silence punctuated by the crackle of battery powered radio voices, two nights of diminishing water I chose to leave the dead zone, cross the border into light at 26th.

buses ran but didn't stop, full of those from deeper in the dark than I.

refugees bound north gather at bus stops like Hitchcock crows, two, then four, seven, twelve then four and twenty.

finally a ride in a livery cab not playing fast and loose with fares.

fifteen bucks from soho to 66th in ridiculous traffic, even crammed in with four others going north was less than the meter would have read.

so here i lie, comfortable and bathed, fed and plugged in, charged and observing online and televised, the singular womb of downtown.

shall i say I almost miss it? the adventure of it. but only enough to have returned yesterday, briefly, for warmer clothing, to toss what had defrosted and to hike once more up and down ten flights of stairs.

tomorrow, they tell us, we'll get the power back. but new yorkers never really lose power. we just convert it to other forms of energy.