Skip to main content
Holiday 2011

In Irene’s Wake

Main Street in Creswell was still flooded days after Irene.
Main Street in Creswell was still flooded days after Irene. Photo courtesy National Weather Service.

You spun yourself
From thick strands of salt water
And a fever in the tropics, wove
Your fabric coarse
Around the edges, your eye
Opening like a net
Cast over Cape Lookout.

You tossed your arms
And pulled the sound over us
Heavy as a widow’s shawl
And we watched the water skirt
Up our streets, dragging boats
From anchors, ripping live oaks
And cedars from the seams of the earth.

You left us with only the veil
Of midnight for cover, scraps of glass
And plywood scattered like ashes
Over our lawns. You left us
With morning, a day
To set things right, the gauze of sunlight
Settling over us.

This poem was published in the Holiday 2011 issue of Coastwatch.

For contact information and reprint requests, visit ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/coastwatch/contact/.