If you blow, blow hard as the lion’s roar, the fire’s snap, the bullwhip’s crack. And if you spin, spin like the dreidel God built from the ark, spin like the haunted carousel. And in that haunting melody, where gallops fancy, and whilst children ride remember in their dreams, accelerate, till your music blows, and spins, and flares.

Thus spirals the hurricane, and brings to the doorsteps of America her beaches. Thus she washes these streets. Bring the salt and the sand to the parking lots, bring the crabs and the weeds to the lanes, and let them change lanes, and let them drive our avenues and boulevards, and let them honk, and blow, and spin, as we do, like we do.

And I will fear you, if you do these things, as it is right for me to do. I will listen to you, and cower from you, and I will know in your supreme holiness what fragility remains here, seated on soft earth only by virtue of pale fortune, and I will pray, to you or some other aspect of nature that might hear or better heed, for mercy. For I am man alone and you are the world, and what you work I observe only, cannot hinder and cannot help.

If you blow, blow, I will fly. If you spin, spin, I will spin. If you wash me, I will be scoured and I may die for I cannot withstand your salt, and your music. And when you dissolve over New England you may dissolve me as well. So this is no prayer for me, this is no prayer at all; this is a psalm to your tyranny, gladly composed and wrought beneath your weighted shadow. It is a spell of submission, not a curse. It is a kiss for peace, a lambent surrender. It is hope, bloody hope, gasping hope, chained hope, hope alone, hope always.