
Wind or water.
Hurricane, pray tell, which will it be this time?
Which will take our people?
We step over chunks of collapsed concrete and earth-snatched trees to silently approach the remembrance wall.
Flowers, names, crosses, candles.
Our missing and our gone.
It fronts a backdrop of tumbled boats on top of each other; a crane to unjumble the pile; and a high-rise saved … because this time … it was the water.
Houses and people, boats and souls.
They lie in the wake of a monster who wouldn’t, couldn’t stop until it had torn apart everything in its path.
We’re angry … as loud as the howling winds staking their claims to history … as furious as the rushing waters that kept coming and coming, higher and higher.
Tomorrow can be about the science and the religion and the build-it-back spirit.
Tonight, we rage.


Hurricane Ian. September 28, 2022.