Here in the northeast, Hurricane Irene is harassing us with overlapping waves of calm and pounding force. Sporting events have been cancelled and the Stop-and-Shops have been out of milk for 18 hours. Many people have retreated into their homes with days of water and prepared foods, and aren't expecting to have anynything asked of them for days. Almost (or by now, maybe more than) 10,000 flights out of area airports have been cancelled. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.
But Jayne Jaudon Ferrer at Your Daily Poem tried to find us a hurricane metaphor and came up empty. My library may not be comprehensive, but it similarly let me down as I searched for something to present here as a place where poetry had come to rest up against the coming threat. And I finally realized my mistake.
While we're exhibiting some similar behaviors in the face of the storm, what we're really doing is projecting our unique fears upon it, allowing it to distract us from something we would otherwise be fearing. Or for those who are refusing to yield, refusing to leave their homes, are doing the same - standing up to the storm because it's something they can stand up to.
Poetry operates at the place between what you want to say and what you can say. At times, it says the unsayable. At times, it starts with what is said and works back to how the need to say it was created. In both cases, it tried to surprise us, even as we put the pen to paper, with what we come to believe when we read it.
Which is what happened to me here. I'll leave it up for a while. At least until the storm ends.
The waters have receded. Poem has been deleted.
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