The Wave: Poems from Hurricane Helene by Annelinde Metzner

For 37 years, I have resided with awe and delight in the Appalachian Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina.  With gratitude for the palpable strength and ageless beauty of the great mountains down to the tiniest ephemeral flowers, I have poured out poetry and music in honor of Her and my life here. In one day (or three, including the days of rain leading up,) Her pristine beauty and the homes and lives of thousands were destroyed by the violent winds and rain of Hurricane Helene.  I was dropped into a deep well of grief, which I still experience to this day.  But something very ancient, basic and fundamental pushed me to write poems, astounded as I was by the events and human interactions around me.  I hope these poems give you some sense of the experience.

The Wave

On the map, a giant wave,
biggest you’ve ever seen,
curling up from the Gulf
and encircling my mountains,
Appalachia,
with Her water and winds.
She crested over us, curling around Tennessee,
and some of us drowned.
I prepared for this when I was two years old,
Mommy holding my hand,
actually holding me down
under the crest of the waves at Rockaway Beach.
And here we are, my little town, 
Black Mountain,
in the purple center of maximum rain,
the millennial rain and wind,
once in a thousand years.
Hurricane Helene.
Helen of Troy,
“the face that launched a thousand ships.”
Troy of Old Europe,
where the Queen Goddess Mother still held sway.
She is back for us now.

Red Cross Laundromat

Yesterday, giving away produce
in the Food Lion parking lot,
a woman, eyes dark with stress,
told me point-blank:
“Tomorrow they will demolish my house
and all my belongings.”
She gives an air of not knowing where she is,
where she resides in space.
“I’m one of those with no place to stay.”
Today, washing comforters at the Red Cross Laundromat,
a kind man shows me how to start the machines.
The Red Cross truck arrives with a hot lunch.
Our feet, our hearts, our bodies are somewhere in limbo.
I meet a friend at the clothes dryers.
She looks into my eyes and shakes her head.
“I don’t know if I’m here or there.”

A Communion of Candles

No power for eight days,
and now I feel a joyful anticipation,
-something chthonic, something about fire and light-
each night as I sit at the table,
two candles lit.
They give just enough light
so the vast darkness around us
is not spoiled, not violated
with endless, voracious glow.
Just these two halos of light,
wax carefully dripped to hold them,
burning each night to maybe an inch of their height.
My pen feels quieter here, the words flow
as though a pipeline direct to the Universe,
as though the waters of life power through my pen.
I’ve finished two candles today,
small blue stubs, wax drippings hardened,
but I can’t throw them away,
as though those words that flowed from their warm lights
through the ink of my pen
leave traces still sounding in the ethers,
recorded in small lights.

Naked

To sit in the sun and watch the leaves
falling one by one in the tender breeze…
the gentleness.
The leaves are becoming stripped-down,
in their true colors,
everybody out together naked.
We have learned this too,
bowls of homemade soup on a streetside table,
showering next to your neighbor with your solar water bag.
A blessing!
We are all as naked as Autumn leaves,
a row of us sitting in the sun
borrowing a neighbor’s Internet,
talking, meeting and greeting.
Amazement at what these people are,
what they can be.
“Get a bucket to flush your toilet!” sounds one,
or “We got the OK to do laundry now. Yay!”
Everyone naked and bright-colored as Autumn leaves,
floating gently downward in the breeze,
grounded.

Pretty Saro

“Down in some lone valley, in a lonesome place…..”
These Appalachian mountains drew me in,
irresistibly enticed me like Calypso did Odysseus,
magnetized me before I ever knew it.
I was drawn here to this powerful feminine vortex,
spinning us all inward into creativity,
and a type of madness.
Oh, bring it on!
I knew, in my thirties,
somehow these mountains were giving me that,
giving me the green light,
the giant “YES!” to the new, the creative, the visionary.
I was nurtured in the lap of the Great Grandmother Mountain.
“where the wild birds do whistle and their notes do increase….”
(from the old mountain ballad, “Pretty Saro”) 

Redwings

After the hurricane,
tables and tables of goods and needs,
diapers and staples and antibiotics,
water and food.
Kind police from downstate
come up to take away my trash.
Everywhere tenderness, loss and pain.
Had to stop by to check on the garden,
the Community Garden,
where thirty-five people keep their plots,
most goes to the needy,
and I bring my kitchen scraps for compost.
I turn in on the dirt road
and LIFE comes at me with all Her might and beauty,
rich and full.
A cacophony of migrating birds!
Hundreds of red-winged blackbirds, heading down south,
sensing the cold winter near.
Incessant chatter.
The sun shines, the breeze blows,
and it’s a good day!
I venture down into the gardens- can it be?
Untouched and unscathed by the winds and flood,
the Swannanoa runs peacefully by,
meandering around the gardens.
Greenest new beds of nettles!
I must bring thick gloves and pick some.
Regeneration after catastrophe.
This is what She does.

Poems by Annelinde Metzner, Black Mountain, North Carolina, October-November 2024