Super-Sized Series

 Evacuation from Floods and Fires

 

ALASKAN EXPERIENCE OF THE GREAT FLOOD OF ’93 by Lorraine Caputo
 
Day after day of work
my roommate gives an update of
her daughter in St Charles
Today she made it
Today their trailer is still safe
The river is coming closer
Today they still survive
The Missouri & the Mississippi are rising
But her trailer survives
Today
Today the river still rises
Today they lost it all
 
We sit around the TV
Many of us from Kansas City Jefferson City
St Louis Canton, Missouri
from Quincy, Illinois
from Minnesota Mississippi
from Iowa
Watching the flood 4,200
miles away
We are so far away
just this TV
with satellite RATNET images
just the telephone
the Anchorage Daily News
 
A huge photograph
spans the front page
US 63 & US 54
flooded collapsed
by the rising Missouri
Jeff City Mary & I
hang over the grainy black & white image
How many times
we had gone up that very cloverleaf ….
 
A St Louis-Columbia friend writes
he includes the Missourian
stories of sandbagging Rocheport
Another friend writes
with news of a benefit concert
Columbia is spared, or course
but not Huntsdale, not Easley
Lupus, McBaine ….
 
The summer rains continue on
in the Midwest
In Alaska, we share the news from home
 
Quincy Charles
His family home
will be spared
It sits atop a cliff
 
But Jennifer from Canton across the Mississippi
hears the worrying news
Her family is hanging on
hanging on
washed off
As the Alaskan black nights
finally arrive
with the Northern Lights
As the Alaskan mornings
break later & crisper
Jennifer serves us eggs & pancakes
in her new t-shirt which reads:
“I Survived the Great Flood of ‘93”
 
& Mary from Kansas City
& Kathy from southern Minnesota
worry & yearn to run
run home
to their flooded families
& Eddie from Mississippi
says he doesn’t worry
the river widens out
after Missouri
But his brown eyes
hold the floods
rolling down down
to the Gulf
He stubs his cigarette
& returns to work
in the kitchen
 
We watch the TV
read the letters read the newspapers
calling calling over the thousands of miles
In the dining hall over dinner
venting our anger
at the Army Corps of Engineers
cursing their dredging
of the ancient rivers
Praying
Hoping for our families
Cursing the rains, the Army
the thousands of miles ….

I Have Evacuated by Elaine Sorrentino

Last Name:
Ruxpin

First Name:
Teddy

Complete Address:
The green toybox in Daniel’s room,
the end of the hallway

Complete Email: 
Huh?

Contact phone number:
I’m too young to use the phone,
plus, my paws are bulky, like mittens

Date you’re evacuating:
When Mommy’s brows wrinkle
and her voice wobbles when she calls
Nana to tell her we’re having
a sleepover in her bunk beds

Evacuating to what location?
Best place ever – Nana’s!

Any other information you would like to provide?
After the snow stops, please check in
on Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh.
We needed to leave them behind.

Note: In 1991, when the No Name Storm (a.k.a. Perfect Storm) hit Scituate, MA, where I was living, I needed to pack up my children and a few of their belongings and evacuate to my mother's house.  There was no way for police to know what homes had been evacuated and which homes still had occupants.  I saw earlier this year that towns have online "I Have Evacuated" forms to let town administrators know they do not need to check on you. I wrote this poem as a current event poem before a bad snowstorm in February required beachfront residents to evacuate. BTW - When we returned to our home in 1991, there were four feet of sludge in our basement and our waterfront neighborhood looked like a war zone. 


 

Twice in One Storm—Evacuated in Hurricane Florence 2018 by Joan Leotta
 
This storm, named for my mother did not cosseting us.
Florence first tossed us out of out Hilton Head vacation rental
midweek, sending us south to avoid its prediction path.
 
After a couple of days in St. Augustine FL with other storm
orphans we watched Florence (9/14) stomp onto land just a few miles from
home, on 9-17 we headed up north and discovered our home
 
untouched in spite of what we had seen on television.
However, we had not counted on the treachery of the rivers.
So, on the 19th, laundry done, day sunny, sky blue
 
all was well –until it wasn’t!
Around two in the afternoon a pounding on the door
roused us from our usual afternoon activities.
 
“You have twenty minutes to pack and turn
off the electricity—we will be back for you.”
Looking out I could see the street was already
 
flooded beyond the safety level for our autos
I ran to the back and saw that the Caw Caw River
\was creeping stealthily up to our foundation.
 
Clothes, computers, meds, pictures, boots,
Moved a few things out of the garage into the
higher levels of the house—hoping for the best.
 
We’d acted rationally, no panic, after all we
would exit in a high-water rescue vehicle—rational
ran out when it seemed they’d forgotten us.
 
My husband called 911 and gave our address—
Except it was the address of our first married residence
(in Virginia) and it took me a bit to notice the error.
 
We went out onto the porch to wait and soon they came.
We climbed up the ladder to seats on the top and rode
Through water a foot high, over lawns now muddy swamps,
 
we rode to a dry pace where a bus drove us to the county
storm shelter. Friends outside of the flood zone
picked us up there a few hours later and for the next

few days, until the foul mix of water and swamp mud
receded, we stayed with them.
Our home was not as bad off as some others.

Our cars were operational, water having risen only
partly up the tired inside the garage, but everything
that foul stinky mud and water had touched was now trash.
 
In a few days, we had arranged for cleanup
In a few weeks, damaged walls had been replaced.
But even now, a few years later, I still freeze at the mention
of hurricanes and the only thing that calms me is
the memory of all the kind people, friends, and strangers
who helped us when we were evacuated
—twice in the same storm.


Evacuating for the Hurricane by Joanne Durham

The day before, the waves spill
the sea's incantation: come rest
in this gentle promise,

seagulls dismiss the ocean's 
song, fly towards the storm's eye
to settle inside its womb,

and spiral where it wills them.
Wingless, we will ride the other way,
unencumbered

like the birds, having learned to lean
on lightness, only bearing
my bag of journals,

your ukelele, the Navajo sand painting
that hangs above our bed - earth
holding hands with sky,

earrings from everywhere I've been,
my hard-bound Leaves of Grass,
spine half chewed

by my childhood dog, but no words
lost. A week's worth of clothes. The rest
replaceable,

we could start again with different pots.
If we didn't find heavy cast iron,
the lighter versions

are still dependable
for sealing in the goodness
of what serves us well.  

From my chapbook On Shifting Shoals


After a gully washer floods the yard and driveway, my caregiver calls by Sharon Waller Knutson

“Pack a bag,” Sylvia says. “If Queen Creek rises
 any higher, they are evacuating Queen Valley.”
I remind her I have no car and don’t drive.
She tells me to walk out to the road and hitch a ride. 

I picture myself sloshing and slipping
and falling on my face and drowning.
“I am safer staying in the house,” I say. My son agrees
when he calls from Idaho right after she hangs up.

In the 26 years I lived out here, I have been
evacuated from two forest fires, but although
the washes overflow and the road runs like a river, 
I was never evacuated from a flood.

We are more concerned the road will be washed
down to the rock and Sylvia won’t be able
to show up with groceries and prepared meals
since I will be out of food in another day.

Thirty-five homes have been evacuated
to the old Texaco on Interstate 6 where we used
to gas up the Cadillac and Ford Truck,
Sandy says when she calls from town in the afternoon.

“Are you okay? We read on the internet
about the mandatory evacuation,”
says my sister calling from Portland that evening.
I assure her I am warm and dry in my own bed.

“A boulder is blocking the road,” Sylvia says
the next morning. “I’ll try to get out there later.”
At 4 pm, an ATV driven by a handyman shows up at the door
and Sylvia hops out with backpacks filled with food.

“My truck almost got swallowed
by a sink hole,” Sylvia says. “I’ll be back
in a couple of days if the road is fixed.
If not, you have enough food for five days.”

I finally understand my survivalist soul mate’s 
stockpiling of supplies that have sustained
me over the many months since he disappeared
June 30, 2025 between lunch and dinner.


 In the World of Floods by Marianne Szlyk

The water, river no more, flows
a thin yellow-brown, color of dirt,
color of sewage.  Pictures on a screen
cannot capture the summer stench.

Parents might remember Katrina.
There families huddled on roofs,
rode rafts, staggered to the Superdome
despite heavy wind and driving rain.

Today it is Kentucky’s turn.
Red, white, and blue flags
hang limp.  Even they
could not resist the steady storm.

A woman stands on a boat,
speaks to the camera,
to people gaping from phones,
from homes beyond the water’s rise.

Mud, water no more, flows,
sweeping out all
that has made us human,
that has made houses home.


 

Stay safe, little house by Joe Cottonwood

You are the home I built 
where I've lived 40 years.
You raised 3 children, 
5 generations of dogs 
amid a redwood forest. 
I hope to die here, 
but not in a wildfire. 
I'm out tonight 
along with thousands, 
friends and neighbors 
evacuated, watching the news 
with hearts breaking. 
I pray for them.
And you, little house.
Stay safe.

Note: I had to evacuate for an oncoming wildfire in 2020. Returned 8 days later. House was unburnt though saturated with smoke. 


For Linda Who Had to Evacuate by Mary Ellen Talley
 
Tomorrow my husband will drive
us to the oncologist
for my body scan
to hopefully rule out
a secondary onslaught
and plan what’s next.
 
But today, I’ll stop
at the Assumption parking lot
where city workers will allow us
to park and walk to our homes
that didn’t burn.
There’s wildfire devastation all around
as we walk not far
from blocks of Spokane houses
burned to the ground.
 
I will look for the wallet
my son lost
while watering roofs for neighbors
and I’ll open my mailbox
to see if any get well cards
will boost my spirits.
 
To lose a home or body part
is dire. I remember when
Hurricane Betsy took my home.
We left Louisiana for Spokane,
this safer city, that for today
is flooded with flames,
displaced people, and rescue workers.
I came bounding to a new high school
with my teenage smile
for my gritty new beginning.
 
The terrific thing is that I connect people.
If my oncology nurse is lonely
I’ll link them up with a friend.
If my phlebotomist is headed for vacation
I’ll suggest a restaurant.
Plus, I am resilient
with added tasty dollops of Southern hospitality
that I spread around cul-de-sacs and cities.
My motto: I look to the future.


Bitterroot Valley, August 2000 by Judith Waller Carroll
 
We’d been watchful all summer,
our teenage son’s behavior as out of control
as the fire that burned closer to our house each day,
sparks flying into the yard like fireflies,
helicopters with dangling buckets
hovering over our pond.
 
We suspected it was drugs
that swept our gentle boy into a fury
we were powerless to quell,
the fundamentals of parenting
that worked for our daughter
as useless as one diagnosis after another
of ADHD or just plain crazy.
Meanwhile, the flames marched forward.
 
I piled treasured photos, my father’s old books,
boxes of important papers
into the van, but you refused to leave,
stationed on the roof with the garden hose,
desperate to save what you could.
 
From  my chapbook, Ordinary Splendor, MoonPath Press



My Father’s House at the Foot of the Volcan by Rose Mary Boehm
 
My third limoncello
and spumante.
The sun lodges easy under
my skin, the heat gentles
my blood. However many
 
times he told me, the image
remains tenebrous at best.
How the night moved from
the mountain. Viscous, burning
Zarathustra. How the world held
its breath.
A roaring, a stink like rotten eggs
and acrid, burning fumes.
And how they
 
watched soft black nothings
settle gently and swiftly.
Witnessed the exequies,
deep meter after deep meter,
of the place where
their lives had taken root.
 
I climb the same hill to see
my father’s half-buried roof,
adorned with broken
tiles and glorious wildflowers.
An earth breaker is moving forward.


Links to more evacuation poems:

Living on the Edge

https://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=3042

Heat

https://redeftreview.blogspot.com/2020/06/heat-by-sharon-waller-knutson.html?m=1

 

Super-Sized Series

 Magical, Mystical and Supernatural

 

 

The Feather by Laurie Byro

My mother was an athlete, almost 6 feet tall.
At the age of fifty, she played in volleyball leagues
on winning teams with twenty-somethings.
 
I am 5 foot 2 and hate sports. Mom called me a wimp.  
I was diagnosed with MS in my mid-forties. Yet,
I am a big walker and may have kept myself mobile
by walking two miles every morning
and swimming in the lake in the summertime. 
 
After this long winter, I am so out of shape
I cannot pull myself up the last rung of the ladder
to hoist myself on the floating dock. 
The lifeguard says "it's the ladder, it's bent,
try the swim raft further out." 

That dock is another 50 feet away but I stubbornly
aim for it, the lifeguard will watch out for me, I figure.
As I get closer, I see what I think is a white bird perched
on the top rung.  But as I get near, I know what it is,
and my heart quickens remembering my mother.

A feather waves like a flag. It was caught
in a spider web.  Beckoning me as I got closer.
I easily hoist myself onto the raft, give the guard
two thumbs up. 

On her deathbed, at the age of seventy,
a few years older than I am now,
my mother said: “Whenever you see a feather
after I’m gone, it will be a message from me.”
 
I stretch out on the raft panting, "message received Mom."
“You did it” the feather whispers in the water
 and I reach for it to catch it before like my mother, it leaves. 


The Plucky Heroine by Sarah Carlton
- after “The Bear,” from
The Grey Fairy Book

The witch who acted as nursemaid
knew some girls were born to mischief 
and a craving for costumes

so she helped her charge sneak
away after dark, cloaked in bear. 
Muscular and sharp-toothed,

this girl-bear felt free to prowl the forest 
and let the story discover her. Like most 
teens, she was both beast and diva.

When the royal hunting party stumbled
on her lair, she cried, Call off your dogs!
knowing a prince tired of court 

manners would deem a talking bear 
cool enough to take home to meet 
his mother. And indeed, she made 

a good impression on the queen
—all fuzz and teddy, hunkering down 
in the palace kitchen with bowls

of blueberries and platters of salmon—
but at night she pulled from her sack 
a moonbeam gown perfect 

for cosplay and dashed off to dance 
at the ball, light as flight, skirts like clouds 
sailing behind her, not a claw in sight.


In the High Desert, She Is No Longer an Aries by Marianne Szlyk

That sign strides the wide sidewalks of Chicago
with wider red shoulders and matching leather pumps.
Pert and brunette, its curls bounce
but stick like plastic when Tom Cruise
(or his look-alikes) touch them.

Aries never listens to lyrics and wears a bow tie.

But she is no longer an Aries.
She is waiting
for the Age of Aquarius to resume.

In coach, she leans back
to watch the high desert become
green, sprouting trees
cloaked in bright moss,
frilled with ferns,
bubbling with mushrooms,
rivers clean and cold to the touch,
tiny houses the color of dirt, grass, and rocks,
color to blend in, not stand out,
nothing red, nothing plastic,

everything
she is waiting for.

Previously published in What's Your Sign? a poetry anthology inspired by astrology (Western, Chinese, Indian) 


Night Sounds by Sarah Russell

She tiptoes to the garden
on cricket nights to visit beings
busy in the grass, sycamore and willow,
hidden except for a swoosh, or chortle,
or pounce and small scream.

This night, she settles herself
on a stone in shadows, watches
moonlight tremble through leaves,
breathes moss, larkspur and clover.
Her fingers play with the hem
of her nightie, and she shivers.

Soon, she hears the wind chime cadence
of fairies dancing. The moon casts
a wildflower path to a clearing,
but the sounds drift ahead, out of reach.
She fears she’ll be lost and returns
to her stone in the garden.

Inside her house are loud voices
and sobs and the thud of something
falling. But she hears only the tinkling fairies. 
She knows someday they’ll find her 
and bring her to another garden
where another girl, sitting on a stone,
will hold her hand.


Auntie Aggie by Lynn White

It was a beautiful seventeenth century farmhouse 
in a picture postcard English village,
the family home of Liz
who would drop me off there 
on our way back home from college.
I would pick up the bus for the last fifteen miles.

That night was my first overnight stay.
Liz lived with her parents and granny
and inside it was as olde worlde as out
with creaky floor boards and beamed ceilings.

It was Saturday and her parents were out
so we played our music loud.
Granny was said to be a little deaf
and she didn’t complain about the music.
I could hear her as she crossed the room above
to open a drawer or cupboard and then return
to her favourite chair in the corner
but there was no angry banging on the floor,
just frequent sorties back and forth,
her footsteps sprightly and unremarkable.
I didn’t mention her to Liz,
it felt rude, somehow.

At about eleven we heard a car draw up
and turned our music down.
Liz’s parents came in
followed by Granny.

Confused, I asked about the footsteps above
and they all laughed.
“That’s Auntie Aggie,” said Liz,
“She lived here when the house was first built.
She always walks when someone new visits.
She likes to introduce herself.
She’ll stop now you’ve acknowledged her.”

And she did!

First published in Dark Winter


The Bowls by Elaine Sorrentino

They nested
blue inside red
inside green
inside yellow,

the largest Pyrex
ideal for summertime fruit salad
and Thanksgiving stuffing prep,
stored on the top shelf

where my mother
tall in heart, short in stature
was incapable of reaching,
so, she shook her fist in the air,

Herb, why did you leave me?
My father, two months buried,
answered the only way he could−
placing the yellow bowl on the counter.

Momentarily disarmed  
she chose not to question the miracle
but continue slicing apples, peaches, grapes
for other-worldly ambrosia.

Good Friday by Joe Cottonwood

Old man Bud hires me
to install an electric outlet
in his spiffy townhouse
because “they forgot this wall.”

Bud watches from a Barcalounger
with a blanket on his lap
as I cut holes and run wires 
and he tells me he died 
three days ago. 

His heart stopped during surgery.
I ask “So do you remember?”
“You mean the tunnel?”  
“Anything.”

“Naa. I woke up with 
a brain like a bowling ball. 
Like I dreamed something. 
Scored a spare.” He laughs. 
“Maybe next time a strike.
Wanna beer?” 


Drawing by Rachael Ikins

Kiss-Me-Kate and the Green Hooded Sod Fairy by Rachael Ikins

Kiss-me-Kate and the blackberries, a green-hooded sod fairy. You offer night’s garden, a pair of open hands. 
Green Man casts a long line until he hooks. Roots grip. Old trunk withers. 
Blackberries bound across the brook, bounce off steppingstones set too far apart. Smear my mouth.
Word-flow trickles, evaporates. Kate kisses the Green Man. His lips bleed.
I make lines, still juice, purple fingers, lines not shaped like letters. 
Paint, 
pastel, 
ink, 
burdock-leaf baskets  sewn with twigs spilling berries, 
 
it is all poetry.


The Psychic in the Seminar by Sharon Waller Knutson

asks me to read the mind of the sceptic:
a pale petite pony-tailed princess 
sitting in the front row staring
off into space like she wants
to be anywhere but here.

A room full of females
stare at me as I describe
what I see in the movie of my mind:
a log cabin nestled in the hillside
populated with Ponderosa Pine
and a red-breasted robin
perched on the porch.

I expect the skeptic to snicker
and mock me because I was sure
her mind was a blank screen.
But instead she whirls around
her blue eyes big as balloons. 
“I was thinking about my grandmother’s
cabin in the mountains,” she says.

The only person in the room
including me who wasn’t surprised
by my mind reading was the psychic
conducting the seminar.

“I knew you had psychic powers
the minute you walked in the room.
You could do what I do,” says the psychic
who charges big bucks in her San Diego
Suite predicting the future for clients.
.
I never hung out a shingle because
my psychic powers came out of the blue
like lightning and thunder 
and I was wrong more than right.

Like when I had a premonition 
a female friend in her fifties
would drop dead from a heart attack
which I shared with my healthy
husband who drove 100 miles
and shopped at six stores
the day before I found him
dead of a heart attack.

I would rather have the powers
of a medium so I could communicate
with him and family and friends
who are already on the other side.

Something Is There by Arlene Gay Levine

not really you and yet…
Something exists underneath
all those bits and pieces creating
whom you imagine you are,
more enigmatic than the mortal
looking back at your face
in the mirror every day.
It is the one gazing at you
from the inside, peaceful,
old as forever and younger
even than tomorrow.
 
When the you that you know,
perhaps falling short of how
you wish you could have been,
is no longer here, something,
that other boundless, soundless
light made of love who is and is not you -
will still be waiting,
an open hand inviting you to
the magnificence of its Mystery
once again.

Previously published in Quest: The Journal of the Theosophical Society of America 


A Dream/A Nightmare by Marilyn Zelke Windau

With wide open eyes,
I sat bolt upright in my bed.
A greyish-white figure
with a human-like body
sat there at the edge.
 
Its strange ghostly face stared at me.
From out of its mouth poured
round metal washers—
hundreds of them.
They clunked to the carpeted floor
silently.
 
It didn’t speak, just eyed me.
It never blinked.
 
I tried to scream, to make noise
but no sound exited my mouth.
 
I ran to my parents’ room to escape.
In horror, I told my middle school friends
my dream/my nightmare later that morning.

From my book: "Living with the Dead" Water's Edge Press publisher 2026


Like the Magic of Cygnets by Abha Das Sarma

I hoped for a transformation.
And to my amazement,
my son was effortless
in Indian percussion—
‘tabla’ flowing from his hands
with the very rhythm 
I practiced 
when I held him in my womb. 

Inspired by my friend
who produced a swimmer
being one. 

Yes, the science may say
It’s but natural 
but for me every beat
is a secret we shared in the dark,
a quiet, lifelong promise.
Magic and wonder that keeps us so
In love.

 
Year of the Black Water Dragon by Rose Mary Boehm

Lichened pillars support
a pier that leads into the turning.
I walk towards a small lake where
the chanterelles open their crooked
fans. Examine the underbelly of the
snail that carries Fibonacci’s
spiral. Canal dreams.
The cranes' mating dance.

Brown and burgundy leaves rush
towards the rotting hut as on a mission.
The mistral sends black flakes
from the burning pines,
and the red of the sky fills with
dark fingers pointing accusingly
upward. Looking inward

Skeletal beasts with crumpling horns
are offering planetary solutions.
Night-sky cravats in all fire colors
weave divisions that recover
on the leaf boat sitting on glittering
pinpoints of light on tiny waves.

Like transparent boulders, raindrops
roll towards the green tunnel
of a giant rhubarb leaf. Don’t
walk on water lilies. Make
a place to trust with peacock
feathers that lead you to sanctuary.

Snakes in the bonsai between
old railway lines. Is a blob of butter in
flour the same as a stone in sand?
Lightning stallions make sharp shadows.
Snow geese sit in baobab trees.

Do not judge your mind.
The world is a loud place.

From my book The Rain Girl


GHOSTS by Lorraine Caputo
 
I am chasing
the ghosts
of my past.
I’m running away
from them.
 
I want to confront you,
grab your wasted,
bloated arms,
force you
to look into my eyes.
I want to confront
your myth,
your reality.
The madness
I fear grows within.
I run from you
screaming
denying your existence,
whether in some reality
or only in my mind.
I want to flee
from you
& yet
I find my Self
confronted,
surrounded by you.
 
I’m chasing the ghosts
of my past.
I’m fleeing
from them ….
 
Previously published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal 


Not Meant for Humans by Luanne Castle
after Claude Monet's The Artist's Garden at Giverny

The walkway seems to have no beginning, and so I tiptoe through the purple and blue blossoms to reach the rough path, feeling naughty and bold but safe for its proximity to a well-painted building. I circle the garden of Iris, the rainbow herself. Round I go three times and then spy a spot of bone under the willow. The sun ray has moved, so now I can see what I have missed. Or did it just appear? I step closer, into the flowers, careful not to crush the blossoms themselves, aware I might be harming stems.  My curiosity draws me in. As I bend toward the ground, I part the plants and see a very small skeleton, as of an excruciatingly tiny human. Her shredded wings are faded with age, but once must have been the blue of Iris with yellow dots like bright and miniature suns. Perhaps she fell from the branch above when she was asleep. I understand now why the path repeats itself, an endless spinning trail, meant as it is for those with wings to fly above the garden and to rest in the shade of the well-nourished trees. Still, being human, I invite you to share in my experience.
Watch for tiny wings
hidden by goddess Iris
and her endless path.


To read more Storyteller Halloween poems

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2024/10/

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2025/10/super-sized-series_0576861597.html