"Summer Storm" by Geoffrey Philp

Summer Storm

After thunderstorms have cleared the city,
after the homeless have abandoned their cardboard palaces,

fog older than Tequesta circles, Seminole arrowheads
and Spanish jars, dulls the sawgrass’s razor,

turns away from the charted rivers,
slithers over the boulevard I could not cross

when the names Lozano and McDuffie rhymed
with the scent of burning tires, and away

from churches with broken steeples that grow
more vacant each Sunday because their faithful

folded their arms while balseros floundered, boriquas
drowned, and negs joined their sisters and brothers

 on the ocean bed. Yet something like music
rises from the sound of the gull’s wings beating a path

over Calle Ocho, Little Haiti, La Sawacera, like the bells
that echo over the Freedom Tower, bright as the final

burst of the sunset against the billboards, gilding the sea
grapes’ leaves washed clean by the evening rain.

***