Away a few days, we return to a deluge—
several inches of water in the finished basement
from above and below, papers and maps
our son’s scattered all over the floor past saving: we tear
at the sodden carpet, peel heavy strips from the concrete, try to envision
how to free it from sticky adhesive, from loaded shelves, with maximum efficacy,

but first I whisper for my daughter. Come see,
I command, standing at the door of my 4-year-old niece’s closet and a deluge
of dozens and, to my limited vision,
indistinguishable pink plastic shoes, the meaning
of which I can’t help but stand there considering, terrorized
by her transformation in a single year from reader to shopper, her life’s map

filling with dizzying speed as her parents wipe then remap
permissible destinations, borders, sights, fill the sea
of her need with things that will not satisfy, but deter
motion in a deluge:
and just in case the love of flip-flops does not suffice to halt all movement
she’s tethered to a television,

house to van, bedroom to kitchen, breakfast to dinner, no division
on this crucial point,
no boring educational toys to distract. I meant
to talk about the summer season
at the children’s theater, deluge
them with appeals to visit, volunteer

to host my nice when she’s a little older, tear
her away a while, but revise
my speech before it’s even begun, deluged
by Disney, by princesses, by product tie-ins, each mapped
to one movie or another, her life its own sequel
which, without the urtext, means

nothing. Nothing will come from nothing. Meaning
that King Lear’s on stage this weekend tearing
the eyes of its characters, its audience, to make us, if not see
better, at least look at the world through its lens, caught in the overpowering vision
of a failed father who orders up the future on a map
that none will honor when the rains

arrive, as if his reign meant
something more than a few dashed lines on a fake treasure map, torn
and divided, written in water, then swallowed by the sea.