I returned my step-son back to the small airport by the sea.

How do you always know where you are going? he asked. He meant how was I not using my phone.

I told him how afraid I was here and of searching for work in a safer place, like where we used to live, up north, no storms.

But the university is on the water, he said. The hospital. The air force base. It seems really nice here.

That evening on a patio downtown, I sat with two poets, speaking of lines, sons, mothers, all the other kinds of weather.

While we talked, across Beach Drive in the park, professionals hung a great parti-colored net—art, precious and fine—from stanchions down by the bay.

This was the first day after the last day of storm season.