Typhoon Dujuan

by Douglas Cole

Awake in another world,
returning, again…
A mystery, a sterile hotel,
swimming in the huge pool
while the winds blow overhead,
the island still in my mind.
The rasta girl from Canada
finds a little stash in her hat
and bangs the trash can
for a drum while I play guitar
stoned and alive…
What am I returning to?
All over the news, images of storm,
shop signs tumbling down streets,
brown rivers overflowing their banks.
No translation necessary.
I wade into it, silent,
ignorant of the local language.
It’s all a sea, faces like waves,
woes we’ve all known,
long before Mars rolled in close.
And long after these streets dissolve
from the wear of our walking,
long after the wind subsides
and the clouds unfold
like a mind coming clear
from too much knowing,
a garden appears,
and there, in that opening,
I breathe without noise,
travel without destination.

Douglas Cole has had work in The Chicago Quarterly Review, Red Rock Review, and Midwest Quarterly. More work is available online in The Adirondack Review, Salt River Review, and Avatar Review, as well as recorded stories in Bound Off and The Baltimore Review. He has published two collections of poetry, Western Dream, through Finishing Line Press, Interstate, through Night Ballet Press, as well as a novella, Ghost, through Blue Cubicle Press. He received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House; and First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway. He was recently the featured poet in Poetry Quarterly. He is currently on the faculty at Seattle Central College.