Freedom Tower view from Central Park
No gardens bloomed in Bay Head this spring.
Surviving structures instead display an empty swathe of sand and debris.
Crepe myrtle and lavender and boxwoods and cherry trees,
Lynchpins that held the dunes in place, vanished.
Chunks of errant concrete, broken glass, twisted metal
Garnish blackened roots and brown brush.
A place rubbish came to die.
And yet, a fragment of yellow, a slender green stem, pushes from that rubble.
One daffodil, alive and well.
One bulb that somehow came to rest, took root, found nourishment.
South of Bay Head most of Mantoloking disappeared,
Steel beams holding a bridge buckled.
In Seaside, the iconic latticed iron rollercoaster
Twisted, snapped, swept away in minutes.
Gone. All gone.
Mayhem can be shockingly democratic.
We, fraught with fear
Of disease
Of death
Of deprivation
Live our lives fixated upon
“THIS JUST IN!”
Our reliance and attention
So misdirected.
The tensile strength underpinning a house
Or bridge
Or Twin Towers
Fails.
It lacks the mettle of one daffodil.
There it sits, the sole survivor.
One fragile flower, sprung from the rubble of Sandy.
As if to offer the ghost of a memory,
A whisper of what was.
What can be again.
©Elizabeth Robin 2013