Stirred up after Wallace, pilgrims C and T travel overland via north coast road to Wolfville. Weather bluster not a factor, but Anita Lahey's knockout poem from Freddy weekend a good stand in. Enjoy.
Hurricane Bill
of wild salmon. Water and D batteries.
We rolled the green bin into the cold
dirt basement. Bought a bag
of Dutch Crunch BBQ, a litre of Coke
and a mickey of the hard stuff.
With thick yellow rope in elegant knots
we moored the house to the fields
of angelica. They said he would gust
to 160, flatten whole stands of spruce
with his low tropical laugh,
strew the harbour with dark rum and shingles,
swat like flies the tidy white trailers,
swipe Louisbourg's pretty light right off the point
and do-si-do the biggest ocean liner you ever saw.
Before hitting landfall on the Rock.
Do your worst, we said. Whisk us
off to Gander. We stood by the clothesline
in our bathing suits. The first rains
pelted the siding. The pines clattered,
Hang on! Cars crept down the shore
to watch the ocean chew holes in the sky.
Just when it seemed time he'd come for us
he strolled up, sat on the step and kicked
off a sneaker. "What a godawful mess." He spit
on his thumb and scrubbed. We were bursting
to remind him he was a hurricane--
as the sneaker turned whiter, he started telling how
last night, coming in from the Mira, his buddy
put his leg through the one whole in the wharf.
"The stench when he pulled that out." I tried to stir
him up, the way his buddy'd bothered
the mucky bottom. "Look now,
you missed a spot." He turned
and turned the shoe. Finally, he whistled (barely
a breeze). The rain went from sidelong
to straight. We shrugged and brought him
indoors. We all towelled off, and drank
the hard stuff down. Not one
stinking foot left the ground.
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