by Tricia Knoll
The flood of July 28, 2022 was not a natural disaster. To imply this flood, along with so many other weather-borne catastrophes plaguing our world, is a natural disaster is to say three things: We don’t know why it happened, we don’t know how it happened and we don’t know how to prevent the next one. But we do know the answers to these questions. We’ve known them for some time. A combination of unfettered capitalism, environmental degradation through extraction economies and government indifference or plain inaction have borne a land in these hills ripe for weather related disasters and left behind communities with little to no defenses against them. Charles Calhoun, Courier Journal, August 16, 2022
Since 1958, the amount of precipitation during heavy rainstorms has increased by 27 percent in the Southeast, and the trend toward increasingly heavy rainstorms is likely to continue. – What Climate Change Means for Kentucky, EPA, August 2016
When you have always lived in the holler
and the mortgage come due or the river
trickles your worries downstream, you accept
barking dogs, loose chickens in the road
and rusted trucks in the side yard. Kittens
thrive for a while. You know the business
and love affairs of neighbors and grandmothers.
Who has work and who doesn’t.
Children know barefoot, few strangers,
and security in familiar. Ponies
run lean and the women leaner,
mountains tall and a gravel lane narrow
—funnels for floodwater.
You could say the name came from hollows
but you don’t. You honor salty talk while
a warming planet has its say with
record rains few had time to measure.
Refrigerators float and homes sweep down
to wrap around trees. You can scrabble
up a hillside, but like so many places
what grandparents built is gone.
The holler has only one way out
and yours will never be the same.
Tricia Knoll does not live in a holler but knows that everywhere is vulnerable to climate change.