[Poetry] Oceans Rising by Lawrence Bridges

The cars sped by at eighty where the surfers

entered the water, paddling out between cars.

No driving home that day when another wave swamped Route 1.

I cut over dunes to find a road leading upcountry

through the bungalows but was blocked by backyards

with panicked horses in muddy stalls.

Cutting through sensitive plants, I shot south to the first bluff

where things were worse. Fog shrouded washed-up trees

where a village had floated out to oblivion.

I crawled under trunks and branches and saw two men

pushing a boat into the water to save themselves, as the waves

rose and blocked the way home south. I crawled back

through a deeper thicket and saw a magazine picture

of a man next to the mouth of a small tiger shark,

dead on the sand. It looked like the shark ate the man.

I climbed to safe ground and watched my car turn over

and over in the surf below. I’d never seen that before,

cars whizzing past surfers paddling in crosswalks and bathing cars.

Lawrence Bridges' poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). You can find him on IG: @larrybridges