I knew I had a rendezvous due with this stretch
when I saw the luminous smokestacks,
the fire-dazzled girders, the peroxide flames
of the refineries and smelt the ethylene.

By day, I hitched. Branches from perished oaks
yearned for me. I internalised the depletion,
memorised the last hurricane’s path,
its cavalry charge and carnage.

All those poleaxed power lines, flattened shacks,
wrenched licence plates from States over the Gulf:
Campeche, Yucatan, Tabasco.
How did that happen? I couldn’t answer.

Whose side was I on? That, I didn’t dare.
I slept among oil absorbent booms, curled
like gorged tapeworms by the spillways.
Nights were endowed with a malignant glow.

The hulks of totaled trucks marked the highway,
countryfolk with carts foraged for haulage parts.
The mesquite was razored by the deathless heat,
shrubland reduced to a matchbox’s striking strip.

It was beyond late: my gums were receding,
my teeth were gnashing, I could hear
the malice in the machinery, the methane
emissions affected a cutaneous prickling.

I was meant to hasten here. When I came around,
the realtor was mid-spiel, robotic, citing college
sports, roadhouses, riverboat craps and blackjack;
the verdancy, it’s incredible, obscene, he said,

but the trees are decimated, the coast is sinking.