Where do you find shelter
When the world presses you too close?
What cellar can hold you
When intermittent cyclones
Cut through your life
Leaving ruined paths
Through what you were?
Where can you go for respite
After rains splash without guile
Full-tilt across your spirit?
How do you cope
With water lashing, stinging,
Geometrically across
What you know to be true?

Can you hibernate?
Close your eyes for a while,
Let go of fear?

Can you find a fragment of peace
Here in my arms?
A cabin of relief
On my shoulder?
Could my eyes and my voice
Be a pier where you could dock,
An improbable log cabin
With cedar closets and potted plants
Comfy pillows and blazing fires
Where you could nap
Until the flood begins to mud,
To ebb and dissipate
And the wind picks up enough
For you to sail once more?