but once in 60 years, a hurricane does hit, and I was in Fort Myers (we had evacuated from Fort Myers Beach) when Charlie visited us.  We lived through it.  Our house lived through it.  Charlie is only a memory now       . . . . and a poem, a poem that was written by me in Aguust of 2004, a couple of weeks after Charlie.  My Poem was published in the August 27, 2004 edition of the The Island Sandpaper, a local rag    . . . ...

The Unfriendly Tourist

Red Carnations thrive in my garden

The sunflowers brushed rudely aside

The bouigainvilleas bush beaten to a pulp

The vileness of an unhappy tourist

Should not be  underestimated;

Hemingway punched Wallace Stevens

In the nose down Olde Key West way

Over a brilliant lady singing by the sea

Then went home to kill himself in Idaho,

Stevens returned to Connecticut to die

In a hospital surrounded by priests

Claiming to have won him back in the end,

While Charlie came to his demise in Carolina,

The fate of many of his kind.

My carnatinos are happy visitors

Reveling in their unexpected feat of survival perhaps,

Adjusting well to the bright hot Florida lime light

And Estero Island night life,

Not so dark drooping Donna

And her even darker grandspawn, Charles;

The coconut does not fall far from the palm tree.