In the Wake of Hurricane Idalia
Southborough, MA
2024, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
The ripples of tap water are now still, contained.
Rubber ducks float languidly beneath
the ritual of sweet summer,
a privilege I’d never thought to praise, while
miles down the Eastern seaboard
in Tampa Bay, a bitter surge spreads
high with might, its levels rising,
tearing homes and palms apart.
Its calming eye stares from within
a cyclone circling calamity around,
threatening those with ancient eyes that gleam,
the paragons of sacrifice in worrisome weather.
Grandma, Mamani, in reckless waves
watches laborious dimes drop down the drain,
floorboards wrecked,
streets flooded wet,
spirals of wind and moistened air.
Transferred heat from sea to land
stirs up storms for hours on end.
Canoes of rescue teams arrive, and
Mamani inches step by step, fleeing north
to a patch of homely grass
beside the paddle pool where I relax.
Bache, come here!
I hear Mamani gently demand.
She strokes my unblemished hands,
“I’ll stay a while,” and lightly sighs.
Until a while becomes forever, her
home now a shelter borrowed & unknown.
Familial love fills half the cracks
of a heart sunken within ruins and stones.
Reflection
Reflection
In summer 2023, Hurricane Idalia hit Florida and destroyed my grandparents’ home. As a preteen who would play in her paddle pool all summer long, experiencing this second-hand loss and trauma, alongside horrific news reports and months of uncertainty, was terrifying. My climate story is my grandparent’s experience of loss, and my shifting perception towards climate change’s destruction on a global and personal level. My family’s tragedies are what most inspire me to take preventive action against nature’s unforgiving capabilities. I wrote this poem and recorded its spoken word version because free-verse poetry enables me to reflect the extreme weather upon which the piece is based. It is structured into one long, monologue-type stanza with continual enjambment and caesura to physically capture the frenzied, uncontained water my grandma had to face. It opens with my summertime ‘paddle pool,’ a metaphor that juxtaposes the wild storm surge of Hurricane Idalia and displays two simultaneous manifestations of water in which dynamically differ. At that time, I wasn’t exactly told what was happening. My poem is based on hindsight, retrospect, and extensive research on how global warming impacts hurricanes now. As my grandparents lost their beloved memories to floods and surreal storms, these parallels between climate change and hurricanes are proven evident and pernicious. Most notably in the poem, I chose to prioritize my grandma: Mamani. Despite battling Stage I Breast Cancer, she single handedly raised me during my early childhood, cooking nostalgic stews and driving me to after-school programs and cheering on my every achievement. She poured every dime and ounce of sweat into fulfilling the American dream just to re-encounter undeserved hardship and respond with, “life is tough, my Bache.” In honor of Mamani’s resilience, I incorporate the sounds of her ‘lightly sighing’ to reflect mixed emotions: relief after her safe arrival in Massachusetts but grief over a flooded home that held many first time traditions and memories, all instantly gone. Nothing will be the same, but things will heal. This is why my final two lines stress the importance of loved ones’ support during phases of recovery and rebirth. I know that my grandparents left pieces of themselves behind in a torn up Florida, what I describe as a “ heart sunken within ruins and stones.’ Though, I hope that mine and my parents’ continual love will ‘fill half the cracks’ as we move on with our wondrous lives.