There are no poets in Miami Beach,

said the environmental geologist

in The New Yorker magazine,

no one to warn or, later, to mourn

its inundation by the sea

which takes everything

in its time—Alexandria,

Atlantis, barrier islands—rising

in response to the grand

dilution of icebergs; yet I wonder

about the assumption concerning

the lack of poets. Surely among

high rises and along canals, seaside cottages,

somewhere among those thousands

of citizens resides someone who

might observe or, post-flood, recount

the horror of well-kept lawns

brewing mud, swampland

exerting its claims, to tell how water

turned back to brine and sand,

gravel shifted around the footings

of apartment buildings with

spectacular views of the Atlantic.

 

It should be epic, the erosion

of Miami Beach, and though epic writers

are scarce these days a poet

who watches the flooded streets

after every downpour, the continuous

narrowing of the sand, might shore

herself against dread

by composing verse and line,

noticing the place itself

the lights, the traffic, palms

and hibiscus, the place

she may lose (can anyone

call it home?) to the sea.