Wrong turn

whole of diamond 12 flooded
looks like old shore
town of all shore towns
in the gray afternoon
NC two lane road
houses on stilts and dunes crawl to
west side of the tracks
where the brown runoff is
up to the doors and mats
and hellos
vacationers hustle
out of rain in board shorts
and bikinis, watch helpless
as helpless trashcans float
away and pass the cars
going 5 miles an hour south
or north splashing in huge white
waves the cars on the other
side, a great froth-war nobody
acknowledges like they would
a few yards away on bay pontoon
boats and crab fishing adventures
and I couldn't get my
window up in time
before the next wave, I just wanted to
smell that ocean air and instead
got a mouth full'a Old Abemarle
Highway salt

Tour o' the town

Sat next to southern belle in
white brimmed shore hat and
soft tanned skin,
at coffee shop end of world
double/brewed ice coffee
none Starbucks entity...in fact there's
no room on the island for a franchise
in fact it's all out of house and home
and you're a local
because you gotta be,

                         anyway,
she was sipping latte and
we listened to the rain lazily drone on
outside, the beach of eternity over
the dunes where the cats
play and rush about stray
and like the people belonging
to this out of the way fish hook,
was barren in the corners of my
thoughts, another place entirely
                        sister and brother
played connect four (the board
10x bigger than usual! maybe? it was
big I swear) playing round after round
and like children can, ignoring me
even when they poured pieces directly
onto my shoes laughing, I smiled and laughed
too, and like their child innocence was 
unembarrassed, watched sister 
deliberately miss three winning
turns in a row so her little brother
would win and they were off to other games,
other memories of which I'd 
play no part,


coffee done we checked 
thrift store in back 
of home and bleak old VHS tapes,
kittens for adoption, but too
far to drive'em (imagine 7 hours
or in fact, yea, more like 9 we'd 
never make it) so
we moved on to small shops in garages
little cute art works and family knickknacks 
and wrong turns and each turn led to
ocean or bay so there's no wrong choice
actually,
and in fact route 12 becomes a
ferry at it's southern most
wandering
until it finds land and then
ocean again
in Ocracoke.

D.E.T

in the morning we
were mosquito food--
the bathrooms smelled
southern wood baking
in the new sun--
we walked to the beach
at some time unaware
of the time crashing on
the shore shells crabs
crab holes they skirted
along the beach watching
wearily they don't trust
big fleshy clumsy feet and teeth
that gnaw and gnash their
brothers--
we fell in the waves
and I carried you out
to sea-- you screaming
--and on the beach no
one but us-- following
you with camera on high
dunes-- you wanted to see
the sea turtles still warm
in eggs unborn-- we were too
early and they behind
man-made tarps--
but picked up sea shells
and washed them in
the clear waters off the
island--
I watched the sea of
the dunes stretching out
until they bled into pearly
blue skies that last night
had been heavy rain clouds
and thunder that shook our
car until it felt to flip over
and finish us-- I felt
your warm skin against me
as we climbed back to camp--
to become mosquito food again
to be guarded from the ocean--
I heard the waves crashing over
our horizon beyond cactus and
dead graying limbs--
I felt those fuckers start biting
and buzzing and landing--
you frantically sprayed us down 
too late

there was this

old Bodhisattva of the
campground NC night
in Joe Rafsky head lamp
and old torn southern
baseball cap, savior of dying
fires or young blue flames,
young sapling stake of wood
in hand, wrapped in some
indiscernible newspaper of
Buxton, Ocracoke (like the
vegetable and the soda, ya)
frisco, and bang the fires
going as the thunder creeps
nearer and then he's gone into 
the past or the wandering, looked for
him for 2 days and he wasn't 
nowhere in that place, patron
saint of the mosquito infested
air, 

we finished the last piece of
meat as the rain hit harder,
the hiss stronger on the cooling
grill, the steam thicker, coals, gray and sad, 
fire, embers and out, we
ran for cover through 
puddles that had just found their way
at our feet and closed car doors tight, 
out of breath and soaking,

the lightening caught up
and flashed southwest across
the starless skysea  

Carolina shores

bugs keep biting,
I've forgotten my notebook
north, half a day's drive north,
the rain lies flat on
car windows like a sheet, there's
nothing outside but sound of
storm and ocean, there's you
sleeping and the back of car
already a disaster, it's
4am darkness, no city lights
on the island, I'll have to remember this
one so I can jot it down
when we get
home