Even the Old

A day after the storm and the sea still roils.
The wind still roars, leaving your ears burning with cold.
Now and then a gust makes your footing uncertain.

And yet you stand at the shore longer than makes sense.
There is a certain glory in all this.
A celebration of survival.

Survival. You remember too many times in the past
when you have suffered storm damage,
and survived to rebuild, recover, reinvent

what was left into something, if not wholly new,
not fully what it once was.

It was work, as it will be after this particular storm.
There is rubble to remove. Decisions to be made
about what is worth saving and what is not.

And there is imagination. Belief
that even broken, there is a miracle to be had,
that even the old can become new.

Even you.

About this poem

Last night I spent time thinking about how many times I have been seriously knocked down, broken, left less than I can be. How many times I did the work of restoration. And how what was left was never exactly what I began with. Body. Soul. Heart. One wonders how many restorations I have left.

The picture was taken Saturday, the day after Hurricane Lee skirted Cape Cod.

Tom