After Every Storm
After Every Storm
Olga Dugan
(for Deb and Jess Benjamin)
what the old ones know is a truth
witnessed storm after storm
no matter how heavy the gray/black
clouds shrouding troubled skies—
a survivor’s song with changing verses
though chorus after chorus stays the same
when Katrina plummeted past Mississippi
buried man-made beaches under tumbling
water on its way to landfall in the Pelican
State, New Orleans’ 9th ward found itself
wading loss, fissured faith, cracks in lips
and skin from summer’s boiling heat, but
joining yet another relief and rebuild team
grandmother folded her tithe in a crisp
envelope still trusting in her widow’s mite
when Isaac hit Haiti, people floundered
belongings coursed down drowning streets
for weeks mother wept for baby swallowed
in a current, for father trying to get “our baby”
back, but months later, a retired teacher
fishing folks off muddy streets, welcomed
her at a table of rice beans—meat
ancient as pain, vital as comfort
when Harvey whirled through Texas
heft Beaumont into the sea, Harris
County teachers lost four students
swept into a bayou, and headlines read:
Toxic spills flood floods, but of kindness
amid wreckage, an historian turned poet
wrote: “healing waters run deeper here”
as ordinary people gathered resources
formed missions to succor the weary, soothe
the fearful, prop up the children of faith
what they all knew is this promise proven
timeless and true that after every storm—
then, now, tomorrow—a choice remains our
own to believe for the barbs and shafts of light
the lattice of parti-colored hues
the morning sun will radiate in some offing
of blue and brighter skies to come
Olga Dugan
Writer & Poet
Olga is a Cave Canem poet. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, her award-winning poems appear in many literary journals and anthologies including The Write Launch, The Sunlight Press, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, Ekstasis, The Windhover, The Agape Review, Grand Little Things, Kweli, Emerge, ONE ART, Channel (Ireland), E-Verse Radio, evolution: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, and the Munster Literature Centre's Poems from Pandemia – An Anthology.
Artwork by Igor Kyryliuk