NVN Saturday: 2 Poems After Helene

"Helene" by Terri Kirby Erickson and "Carolina Wrens" by Clay Steakley

HELENE

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Cadaver dogs and search crews trudged through knee-deep muck and debris in the mountains of western North Carolina on Tuesday looking for more victims ofHurricane Helene days after the storm carved a deadly and destructive path through the Southeast. —AP, October 1, 2024

*

He found his wife’s body draped over
a limb, her skirt flapping in the wind
 
like a bedsheet pinned to a line, her
long hair hanging like Spanish moss.
 
He dropped to his knees in the mud,
moaning like a bear caught in a steel
 
trap, ready to gnaw off its leg to stop 
the pain. He didn’t care, anymore,
 
about their splintered house floating 
like matchsticks down the river, never
 
felt the dog’s rough tongue trying to 
lick the agony from his face. Still, he
 
could not make himself believe what 
he was seeing—pictured her, instead, 
 
walking down the aisle with flowers 
tumbling from her hands. He vaguely

recalled saying to her, Till death do us 
part, but it tasted like gibberish in his 
 
mouth, words with no meaning about 
a time he was sure would never come.

*

Author's Note: My poem “Helene” is an imagined narrative prompted by reading and hearing about the devastating destruction and loss of life in western North Carolina (my beloved home state) that occurred as a result of Hurricane Helene. I also drew upon my own experiences with trauma, grief, and sudden loss while writing this poem.

*

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Rattle, The SUN, and numerous other publications. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize among many others. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

*

CAROLINA WRENS

by Clay Steakley

*

The second day of October.
Thickets of Carolina Wrens
Singing the song called Home.

The mountain towns paved
With floodwash, heaps of silt, 
Deathly mass of wayward trees.

Red maple, Yellow poplar.
Those remaining will pennant
The air in time for the funerals.

The Carolina Wren is small-bodied
And big-voiced. The Carolina Wren is
June Carter singing Wildwood Flower

Ginger lily, goldenrod, and aster.
Red chainsaws, yellow backhoes.
Brown water. Everything is brown water.

A safety-vest-orange maple leaf
On a dark casket is an easy image,
But that makes it no less real.

The Carolina Wren is a plain thing.
Unadorned, like this writing,
But overspilling with living.

Where is a town when it has
Been washed downstream?
It is in the people sharing meals.

Cool in the mornings,
Cool in the nights.
Wrens sing the song called Home.

*

Clay Steakley is a writer, musician, filmmaker, and theatre artist. His work has been published alongside Aimee Bender’s and Lauren Groff’s in Slake, as well as in Cathexis Northwest Press, Fiction Fix, From the Depths, and Waxing & Waning. He was a finalist for a PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship, and received the Ruby P. Treadway award for creative writing. He was a 2020/21 OZ Arts Art/Porch Art Wire Fellow. Clay's current project is The Fire Cycle, a multidisciplinary collection of poetry, music, film, and visual art. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.