The track of Hurricane Irma
As a poetic term darkness is often used to connote the presence of shadows, or evil, or to suggest that a story you’re reading is grim and depressing. The darkness we’ve experienced these past 9 days puts the term darkness in a whole new light. The darkness of hurricane Irma is like a darkness I’ll never forget.
Sunday night September 10th 2017: The winds began to howl around 9:30 pm. Laura and I were hunkered down at my mother in laws house in Brooksville FL, helping to look after an elderly lady who had been terrified by news reports that were reporting Irma to be a hurricane of apocalyptic proportions. Each time we managed to allay her fears and calm her down, another news report proclaimed once again that doom and gloom were just around the corner.
We’ve been residents of Florida since 1986 and have been in a number of extremely dangerous storms. One should always err on the side of caution, and it’s important to listen to federal instructions carefully and obey them to the letter. And that means to stay in place if instructed.
We had been watching Irma chug towards the mainland for days. We knew it was a massive storm but were unsure of the exact track. It wobbled to the east for a bit then changed its mind and wobbled to the west. That is the nature of a hurricane. Wherever it hit the mainland it was imperative to allow those residents to evacuate first and in an orderly fashion. As days went by it was clear that it would hit the Keys and Southern Florida. So our decision was to let the millions of Florida residents who live in Miami etc. buy gas, and evacuate before Interstate 95 N became a parking lot. In principle as long as every one obeyed the rules, and folks from say Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach etc could evacuate in an orderly fashion, town by town then theoretically the interstate would not be too clogged and there would be enough gas for everyone, and folks could reach their destination.
Unfortunately, rather than thinking about the masses, many residents panicked, bought all the available gas they could cram into containers and piled into their cars and contributed to the chaos of clogged roads by evacuating too soon.
Flooded road after hurricane Irma stopped by
We lost power at 10:30 pm on Sunday night, and retreated to our separate bedrooms to ride out the storm. We had first purchased the house for Mom a few years earlier and had investigated the builder before the purchase. Luckily he has a reputation of “over” building so we were confident that the house could withstand severe battering in the event of a large hurricane. Now the building was about to be tested. Irma pounded on the windows pleading to be let in, and begged for the roof to buckle beneath its staggering strength, yet for 7 long hours Mom’s house resisted its insistent calls, and as dawn broke Irma gave up and moved its traveling circus northwards to pester another innocent community.
Monday September 11th (?) started out angrily, clouds scudding across a darkened sky, breezes picking up hats that by law are required to sit on a bald mans head. Irma left a stain on Florida for sure, but the fact that it had passed over land continuously for 240 miles had slowed the monster down from a Category 4 hurricane when it barreled into the Florida Keys to a Category 1 when the eye passed directly over Brooksville FL. We were lucky.
“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” “Don't be afraid of your fears.”
Darkness is pitch black, the dead of night or when after your eyes have become accustomed to the darkness you still see nothing but the inky black tapestry of a starless night sky.
Interstate 4 headed toward Orlando from Tampa is a parking lot
On Friday September 15th in the evening, long after Irma had high tailed it out of our area, but still without power we had a massive rain storm that dropped, apparently, 20” of rain within a few hours. We have never seen such torrential rain in our lives. I must say it felt wonderful while it was happening and La and I sat with the windows wide open sucking in the cool breezes that the rain had floated in on. Sadly what we did not realize at the time was that The Withlacoochie river was close to bursting her banks and the rain storm was the final insult. Since September 15th our neighborhood has been flooded, with roads closed for a week and energy companies unable to work on getting all of the residents their power back. Everyone is exhausted, but in truly impressive style people have been incredibly well mannered and uncomplaining.
So now we wait like Lemmings, with our fate in the hands of local government. FEMA has dropped off some water and dried food to all of us. The roads are now open again, and I write this essay on a computer that is being powered by a borrowed generator. Things could be so much worse for us, in fact our hearts go out to all the residents of Puerto Rico whose lives have recently been demolished by Irma’s sister Maria, and to the citizens of Mexico who have suffered 2 enormous earthquakes one measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale within a few weeks of each other. Yes our problems are very small indeed when you compare them to those 2 disasters.
Croom forest near our house
The Wait. ©Tim Battersby 2017
Truth hides behind a veil, like the sun,
Waiting, as it peeks from behind clouds
Inexorably searching, knowing that knowledge lies around every corner,
Yet with a simple puff can disappear.
Time proves the existence of fear,
As all scatter, like rats on a sinking ship.
Hold steady, the course is set by things far larger,
Yet all I see is anger in the eyes of those that believe,
And fear in the man who tries to see,
Yet struggles with complexity but satisfied by his version of truth.
And finally, candor emerges
From behind dark clouds,
Revealing black horrors and hurt, hidden by decades of lies.
Covered in cobwebs, truth is laid bare.
THE WIND by Tim Battersby ©2017
Hurried winds rush by, startled whispers in the night. Deciding that time should stand still for kestrels to bed down in their willowy flowered sills of endeavor.
Grace, moves lightly as she parries questions from within, yet seems to know the answers, and an owl flies idly by, changing zones but standing still as the world replies in silence.
Deafening orchestras play in muted tones, thrusting back and forth between strings and horns, the maestro keeping time like a metronome doling out the beat.
Finally, as dawn approaches, the wind dies away replaced by silence and an eerie light, and a solitary soul ventures out with a look of disbelief and pain as she realizes she’s alive.