Adjustment

Adjustment

So much for the ineffectual sandbags:
we were put in touch with the loss adjuster,

who came when the ‘black water’ had retired.
They would indeed replace the white goods

(for which we’d better find the lost receipts)
but, with a droll glance at the furniture,

he let us know that didn’t mean
what was wrecked already might be redeemed

nor that the house would be caulked and fitted out
with gopher wood against a future flood.

He must have seen a rainbow smudge
of expectation in our eyes. His soles scuffed

the buckled floor boards — the alluvia
of silvered dust, clay, gravel, seeds and spores

still promising the new, the better life.