Hurricanes - My 24 hours in Gautier

It would appear my experience was different. It had in common the beginning - snow, leaving a day late, blue tarp roofs on approach to Gulfport, the wall-less churches, miles on Rt 90 with only stairs and driveways but no homes. Certainly, I heard the stories of the Monday I missed. I broke bread, circled that first morning, ripped down and built up, saw a twisted tree and learned what "FEMA trailer" really meant. My closest personal encounter with a life that survived Katrina was a colony of termites continuing their daily destruction of a shed I was helping to re-build.

My Mississippi-Katrina experience changed from everyone else's at 3PM Tuesday afternoon. There will always be a footnote - I hope only a footnote - to Valentine's Day. That is when the telephone call came letting me know my oldest daughter, Erin, had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a disease that had killed one of my closest friends. I left Mississippi three hours later.

But in those three hours, there were arms that held me, voices that comforted me, strangers who had lost everything just months before who took me into their hearts and prayers that I've heard ever since. I grew up learning to control emotion, to not cry but some times the storms are just too large.

I can not add to the thoughtful remarks made in church this past Sunday nor can I contribute more to the countless words contained in the hundreds of pictures taken and shared by everyone with a camera. But many of you began asking within hours of our arrival on the 13th if I had written anything yet, was there a poem to capture our own storm building.

Poetry is not everyone's cup of tea, it certainly was not mine prior to a few years ago. It is still very much a marvel to me. The process of writing, for me at least, is a bit odd and does not always flow as logically from observation as I would like it to. The poems, as I think any writer will tell you, have a life of their own; it is more a matter of looking clearly to see them.

That being said, my poems can be a bit dense and obscure sometimes. They often fuse several ideas or sights that occupied my mind at a particular moment. So, for me, Mississippi, Katrina and cancer are going to be linked for a long time.

I did write on the Friday after I returned, the last full day the team worked in and around Gautier. The following poem was circulated among those who were in Mississippi. It is here at the request of some of those friends. Without grand explanation - do not look too deeply, this is a poem about images, emotions, memories and place. The parallels of disasters should be evident. The last page is something I had written a few weeks prior to our trip that was still looking for a home. It is about faith. Water is a common metaphor for "the spirit" or God. I think faith and God is a good place to end a story like this.

As you read, some parts are supposed to be in italics but I can not figure out how to do that. The sections in italics are about Erin. They include the first section "Preface remembered", the second stanza in the next two sections, all of the fourth section titled "Seventy-two hours later" and the last five lines of the last section titled "Postscript reminding". Hope that helps.

This is all I can come up with now to say thank you all for being there and for all of your prayers.


Hurricanes


Preface remembered

4AM
a truce signaled
in the shuddered catch
of a shared breath

my sleep lost
to the vision of
a four month old'’s
fingernail


About twenty-seven years later

certainly larger than quantum
fluctuations that begin to spiral
drift westward off the coast
a gentle wave bathed in sunlight
it feeds

maybe not larger than quantum
fluctuations that begin to spiral
drift along hidden pathways
a quiet anarchy bathed in rich life
it feeds


About a month later

Katrina
a tsunami in slow motion
deliberate and random
so defined, circular
her warnings unheeded
a truth beyond telling and seeing

the wind is one of numbers
the constant speed of birth
the constant lack of dying
exponential in yield
and the peripheral strike out
colonize again



Five and a half months later, Valentine's Day

Noon: off to find a bathroom
a moment to wander among new things
unbroken things without mold
a stop sign commands to stop and look
a tree, twisted like licorice
like a rope or cable split open
pulled together again its strength gone
roots firmly planted, still defiant
one person up the bend is graceful
the fall possibly gentle, almost placed
to rest and wait to die
roots firmly planted
still defiant


3PM: it is not a shudder
nor a breath caught moving toward sleep
it is a thrust, sudden and violent
beneath then behind the sternum
then lifting and spinning
then tossed against anything
then the closing in
and though arms hold, lift gently
it almost matters not
it is all her, alone, a phone
and fate more unknown



Seventy-two hours later

noting again wind
how turning perpendicular brings almost silence
but even with backing into it
you can not ignore
truth or metaphor:
pain and spirit
rocks and tears in eyes
and through contrived silence
hearts pounding
louder, alone






Postscript reminding

listening to this place
there is water:

crashing below cliffs
of an island I have not seen

in a lake so vast it curves
rising to meet heaven

there is water in this place
where rain has fallen
along oak leaves and maple
gutters and streams

in this full glass

in this breath that fogs

there is water here
in this place smaller
in veins and capillaries
pressing the walls of cells

deep within this place
where the smallest pieces bend
in a pattern as wings
they move as if they fly

there is water in this place
between where even space becomes as sand

this is where we stand
and there is water

listen

I am listening

This is where we stand
and there is water

listen

I am listening



~ Glenn R. McLaughlin, February 17, 2006