I’ve always been the one
outside,
playing in the storm.
A blizzard in January?
I’d be digging tunnels through
ten-foot-drifts in the boat yards on City Island,
tromping through thigh-high-snow,
X-country skiing in knee-deep-deep-woods-powder,
my Golden Retrieve, like a schooner tossing wave-spray,
zigging and zagging across my way,
relishing our Winter play.
A hurricane in September?
Well, these days,
I’m riding my wind-bucked-sky-chair in the gusts.
But in my younger years,
I’d be tucked on my board in the surf,
racing the combers to the dunes,
sea-salt-foam sucking at my heels,
reveling with Nature in the swells
as She roars-out Her musts.

What the Hell, right?

Even a fine Lady like our Mother
needs to limber-up-her-limbs,
take a good long piss,
plant Her lusty kiss
on some lucky fellow, like me!!
So, I’ll join Her in Her wild joy-ride!
It’s my calling!
Not for me,
the hunkering, hatches battened down.
No comfy huddling behind locked storm-shutters,
drawn tight against the shrapnel in the wind.
Rather,
I’ll stand beside a tall pine,
testing our mettle against the blow,
betting, against the odds,
that if he stands tall in a wind, gusting at 70,
I won’t uproot when a squall batters me at 80!
I’ll cheer for the tree and me
to hold strong against the gale
’till all that’s left of us
is one last rough-bark-laugh
and just enough sinew woven tight within our rot
to offer as our final contribution,
support for new-growth-sapplings and young kids,
fighting their way to the sky,
right through the center of the Eye!