On the Mount Pleasant Bridge When It Came

The storm was coming in over the bay right up through the marshes
of the river, the reed grass straight up into what was left of the sun.
The tide was incredibly high and the little rivers that were dry in the
mud twice a day were one. From the bridge, we could see the dolphins
swimming in for safety. The horizon was empty of beauty, just a dense
grey humiliation of the ocean, but there was such stunning movement,
the waves crushing, the low clouds fleeing, the white birds debating...
such swirling and chaotic movements under this giant mass that was
currently rewriting what beauty could be. Streaks of sun were breaking
through unevenly and illuminating patches of rain all around us, from
Awendaw to Kiawah, up the Ashley, across the Cooper. The Wando
was a pulse of refined swells, sopping up the shores that lines it. 

We stood on the bridge and hung on as the gusts came charging
over us. Such a unique feeling being five hundred feet over the world
when chaos strikes. Fierce winds, sheets of pummeling rain, the lights
of the city and of the boats astray blinking in the madness. The ocean 
seemed to be filling the bay and the bridge felt one wire snap away from 
swaying itself right down into it, but somehow we made it off that bridge 
with our hearts energized, ready for the next one.