This week’s weather presents a rerun of fifteen years ago almost on the same date with Hurricane Laura, a fraternal twin to Hurricane Katrina, landing on our next door neighbor state. Those were hard days, but in true human fashion, humor arose even in the worst of circumstances. Mississippians took umbrage and responded with sarcasm when a reporter said landfall came on the “landmass between New Orleans and Alabama.” Fifteen years later, the reference still comes up as wags report news from the “landmass, AKA Mississippi.” I think the reporters must have learned some geography since every report on Hurricane Laura locates landfall in Louisiana.
We hunkered down and let the storm pass over us in the home we had bought just a few years before. I wrote this poem, partly as therapy, after the storm was gone. It was eventually published in Thema Literary Journal in their issue with the theme of “when things get back to normal.” I remember and have empathy for those who stand in the corridor of Laura as we did in the path of Katrina with the added issue of Covid-19 making sheltering an extra danger.
Katrina’s Aftermath
Four years ago –
Mississippi woods out back
clinched the sale
of a home to grow old in.
The woods turned me
into a child again –
ambling down Papaw’s lane;
watching squirrels play tag through the treetops;
seeing cardinals and Eastern bluebirds
swoop from tree to tree;
listening to woodpeckers rat-a-tatting;
surrounded by majestic oaks, swaying pines, “hicker-nut” trees,
beautyberry bushes.
The morning after Katrina’s
opaque white rain and roaring wind,
in my woods,
pines stand popped off like
little boys’ pencil fights,
roots and trunks of stately oaks
fallen crosswise
like too many grandchildren
sleeping in the same bed.
Pieces of my heart shatter into
grief with searchers
for family and friends;
mourning for lost
jobs and homes;
anger at those who
loot, shoot, and gouge;
relief that Katrina is gone and
we are safe;
gratitude for
our intact home;
and one sizeable shard of
lament for woods
that will not renew in my lifetime.
