The origins of this poem come from the disaster on the East Coast of the United States. Hurricane Sandy struck on October 30 and created so much devastation. It's difficult to even look at the pictures and news footage. I have been thinking about Sandy and the winter storm it generated in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on Halloween. Those two things sort of stuck with me. The result is this poem.
Be kind to Saint Marty. He hasn't written a poem in a few months.
All Hallow's Snow
for the victims of Hurricane Sandy
October 30, 2012
All Hallow's Eve, the snow falls
Like volcanic ash on Pompeii,
Where parents curled around children,
Cocooned them against that instant
Of God unhinged, writing in magma
A poem of dinners uneaten,
Naps unfinished, men and women
Uncoupled, frozen in need,
Bodies joined forever under
The bright trumpet of disaster.
My son and daughter, in costume, greedy
For Milky Way and candy corn, don't pay
Attention to the snow this night,
Don't know we stand in a comma,
A punctuation of ocean and arctic.
Don't know that, last night, this wind drove
The Atlantic between mother and son and daughter,
Revised with wave and darkness, created
An elegy of salt and sea and ruin.
Here is what my children know:
They go to a door, hold out their bags
To strangers, receive sweetness.
I stand behind them
In the cold, listen for Vesuvius
To open its mouth,
To sing again.
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| The victims of Vesuvius |
