 |
|
Hurricane (L'ouragan)
Etching
Alphonse
Legros (1837-1911)
Property of the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
|
Probably everyone has a storm story by the time they are old enough to
organize and retain memories. Mine is the year of the great Fourth of July
storm that put much of Iowa City out of power, dropped electric and phone lines
around the entrance to Grandma Kessler’s home, and left so many large tree branches
on F Street that we couldn’t drive to our home after fleeing the downpour. The
sky furnished the fireworks that day.
There were a number of interesting poems submitted this month. It is
often difficult to select the winners. But these two stood out.
The
ABCs of Everglades
Hurricanes
The alphabet of natural
disaster begins again
each June: A as in
Andrew.
Since the ’50s, we name
all hurricanes
that rage across this
liquid land
that is southern
Florida.
We recall that Isbell
rearranged
the Ten Thousand
Islands
on her whirlwind trip
in 1964.
Inez, ’66, the crazy
one, zigzagged
her path of slaughter
through the Keys
and then ensued Alma,
Gladys, Abby.
The ’60s rocked on and
along came Donna:
Goodbye mangroves,
goodbye white herons.
Down at Flamingo, it
was only a matter of time,
thirty-some years of
calm, before another murderous blow.
What Donna didn’t
finish
in the black forest of
the coast in ’68,
Wilma did in ’05.
In her deadly wake of
storm surge and salt intrusion,
the Eco-Pond is going,
going, almost gone.
The lodge: blown out,
washed out,
doorless, windowless
concrete hulk.
The maniac had done her
ghost-town work.
We recite a litany of
ravishment
from Madeira Bay, to
Cape Sable, up to Chokoloskee,
where Lostman’s River
keeps getting lost.
Will a year come when
we run through our ABCs
and call the last and
worst one Zora?
~ Karla Linn Merrifield
First published in
The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast, Summer 2013.
This poem truly is “a
litany of ravishment.” I liked the description of Florida as a “liquid land,” a
description especially relevant to the Keys and Everglades. I was moved by
the last line of stanza three: “Goodbye mangroves, goodbye white herons.” The
phrase, “ghost-town work.” is very effective as the poet tells us that “What Donna
didn’t finish / . . . in ’68, / Wilma did in ’05.”
Here is the other winning poem:
A
Month of Storms Like Holy Wrath
Saturation.
Land is liquid. Hills flow.
Trees
ease onto highways
where
they stand, roots and all,
like
stubborn jaywalkers.
Houses
slide. Roads dip
as
mountains shift, shrug,
slough
away the works of man.
Our
gurgling crawdad stream
rushes
with logs, eats the soil,
snatches
a cabin, sweeps away
a
full-grown man filling his lungs
with
mud, breaking his body
to
dump him among driftwood.
Wind
whipsaws a Douglas fir
until
thirty-six inches of solid trunk
snap
with a sound like a bomb.
Roof
shatters. Walls pop.
Upstairs
become downstairs.
A
skylight takes flight like a Frisbee
and
lands unbroken in mud.
Clothes
hang on branches.
Fir
needles fill the kitchen sink.
The
refrigerator lies on its side,
food
sprawled over the splintered floor.
How
fragile the works of man.
Yet
somehow inside the crushed house
a
telephone is ringing.
Who,
dear Lord, is calling?
~
Joe Cottonwood
First
published in Muddy River Poetry Review Spring 2018
The
detailed description of damage in the third stanza is especially good—the reader
can see that skylight taking flight like a Frisbee, and those fir needles in
the sink. The most interesting touch, though, comes in the last stanza where,
in the midst of this destruction, a telephone rings. The poet doesn’t tell
us if it is landline (how could those telephone poles have survived?) or a
cellphone that managed not to fly off like a Frisbee or be crushed. Either
way, it is totally unexpected.
Congratulations
to Karla Linn Merrifield and Joe Cotton for their excellent storm poems.
The
Poets retain rights to their own poems.
Bios:
Joe
Cottonwood has worked
as a carpenter, plumber, and electrician for most of his life and is also the
award-winning author of nine published novels, two books of poetry, and a
memoir. He lives in the coastal mountains of California where he built a house
and raised a family under (and at the mercy of) giant redwood trees. His most
recent book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific
Coast. joecottonwood.com
Karla
Linn Merrifield, a
nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had
700+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to
her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is
the newly released full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far
North from Cirque Press. Her Godwit: Poems of Canada
(FootHills Publishing) received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is a frequent
contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, and assistant editor
and poetry book reviewer emerita for The Centrifugal Eye.
© Wilda Morris
