Three Days after the Hurricane

Trees splay like pickup sticks down Bradford Street
and the Surfside Arms roof still lies in its parking lot.

People walk the bumpy lane to our house
with offerings: bread, tortilla chips,

cubes of yellow cheese and salami:
the Heart Attack tray. They want

too much. I’m like the black phone
on his desk, sound still cut off.

There’s no power yet, or running water.
I'm here on a tape loop: chest

compressions, paddles. Clear. Again.
Until they halt. I want to wake

from the nap that made me miss the last
few hours no one knew he had,

while he stood at the stove, making black bean soup,
dicing a fat yellow onion, eyes

weeping a little, as the gusts began to shake
the leaves of Charlie’s maple a few doors down.

I climb out the back of the ambulance, suddenly single,
and see Charlie Mayo’s long-loved maple

on the ground, its hobbit-tunnel roots exposed
like veins across a man’s naked chest.

No one should see this. I want it
to stand up.