September 2019 Winners - Storm Poems

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

September 2019 Poetry Challenge - Storm

Storm-Tossed Ships Wrecked on a Rocky Coast

Johann Christoph Dietzsch

German, 1710-1769

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

I write this challenge post as thousands of Floridians and Carolinians await Dorian’s decision on where to make landfall as a category 4 (or worse?) storm. It seems appropriate that the September challenge be related to storms.

Some storms are devastating. What the winds don’t destroy, subsequent flooding may take. Other storms are milder or shorter in length. A sudden burst of thunder, lightning and rain may cool off a hot afternoon, even as it fixes needed nitrogen in the soil.

William Cullen Bryant, an American poet who lived from 1794-1878, wrote about a hurricane:

The Hurricane

LORD of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!

And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails;
Silent, and slow, and terribly strong,
The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;
While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.

They darken fast—and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray—
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round,
And the forests hear and answer the sound.

He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail!—
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,
And fold, at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space.

Darker—still darker! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart,
As the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.

What roar is that?—'tis the rain that breaks,
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round,
Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies,
With the very clouds!—ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place
The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.

~ William Cullen Bryant

Another American poet, one who was born when Bryant was about 36 years old and preceded him in death, wrote several poems regarding storms. Here is one:

26

There came a wind like a bugle;
It quivered through the grass,
And a green chill upon the heat
So ominous did pass
We barred the windows and the doors
As from an emerald ghost;
The doom's electric moccason
That very instant passed.
On a strange mob of panting trees,
And fences fled away,
And rivers where the houses ran
The living looked that day.
The bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings whirled.
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the world!

~ Emily Dickinson

NOTE: This poem was set to music by Aaron Copeland. Also, Dickinson did not title her poems; she only numbered them.

The following poem is from my collection:

A Pequod Sailor Speaks   

The Atlantic rolling onto the sandy shores

of Nantucket, piping plovers and screeching gulls,

oysters and crabs in the inlets,

rising sun painting pastel wrinkles

on ever-moving water—

this was nature as I loved it

in my boyhood.

Broken masts, bereft wives

and fatherless children

tell another story of the sea.

Still, I can’t resist the challenge

to prove my manhood

and test my nature against

the earth’s salty liquid overcoat.

At first it is easy.

We float through languid days

on indolent trade winds under skies

blue as Nantucket violets.

When I watch the sun set, coloring

the infinite spread of fluid ribbons,

I drift into meditative silence.

Sudden winds bellow, curdle foam.

Sword-sharp, they rip the sails, shriek

and break the mast. Lightning stabs

billowing water. The ocean I love bares its teeth,

opens its jaws, eager to swallow ship and crew.

The turncoat sea leaps over the bulwarks,

Judas, kissing the captain.

~ Wilda Morris

From Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick (Kelsay Books, 2019). Available for purchase at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Pequod+Poems&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss.

You can read other storm poems at:

·         https://poets.org/search?combine=storm

·         http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/storm/

·         https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/poems-about-storms/

·         https://interestingliterature.com/2017/05/24/10-of-the-best-poems-about-thunderstorms/

·         https://www.thoughtco.com/storm-inspired-poems-2725467

The September Challenge:

Write about a storm. It might be a monsoon, a hurricane, or one of those little outbursts (such as those that inspired the storm music in the “Grand Canyon Suite” by Ferde Grofé). It could be a metaphor. Be creative; take the prompt in a unique direction if you can.

Your poem may be free verse or formal. If you use a form, please identify the form when you submit your poem.

Title your poem unless it is a form that does not use titles (don’t follow Emily Dickinson's practice on that!). Single-space. Note that the blog format does not accommodate long lines; if they are used, they have to be broken in two, with the second part indented (as in the poem “Lilith,” one of the November 2018 winners), or the post has to use small print.

You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet.

The deadline is September 15. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however, winners are published on this blog. Please don’t stray too far from “family-friendly” language (some children and teens read this blog). No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published. Decision of the judge or judges is final.

The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to someone else.

If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two months.

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). Put “September Poetry Challenge Submission” in the subject line of your email. Include a brief bio that can be printed with your poem if you are a winner this month. Please put your name and bio UNDER the poem in your email. If the poem has been published before, please put that information UNDER the poem also. NOTE: If you sent your poem to my other email address, or do not use the correct subject line, the poem may get lost and not be considered for publication.

If you submitted a poem on this theme in July, you may revise and resubmit your poem, or submit another poem, if you wish.

Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem.

Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment (Doc, Docx, rich text or plain text; no pdf files, please). Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use multiple spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

Poems shorter than 40 lines are generally preferred but longer poems will be considered.

© Wilda Morris