by Claire Matturro
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| Ashley Garner had given up on ever seeing her wedding ring again. She lost it outside her Fort Myers home just days before Hurricane Ian crashed into the coast of southwest Florida last Wednesday… The family stayed at their home during the storm and went outside to clean up as soon as it had passed. “We’re about 10 minutes into cleaning, and my husband is cleaning up the brush and the trees right next to the garage door,” Garner said. “There’s a pile of brush and trees, and he moves over one pile, and the ring was right there.” —AP, October 8, 2022 |
Garbage swirls around broken people and
lost, bewildered pets while cadaver dogs
prowl mounds of wood and concrete bent to
waste by hurling winds and storm surge. Newly
homeless people crowded into shelters,
feeling the roughness of unfamiliar pallets
hard against their skin, are warned that they
must leave though they have nowhere to go.
Across the globe, Russians continue
killing Ukrainians, but here
in Florida our focus narrows—
How do we find our missing
mother? Where can we get fresh water?
Find food which tastes fresh
on our sore tongues? Shower off this itch and
stink? Is it safe to flush a toilet?
Inland, farmers search for lost horses in
swamped pastures and count dead cows flung
into ditches by river currents broken
free of levees in two feet of rain.
Someone’s pink umbrella floats by
in flood waters spun off a Gulf beach once
seemingly benign and filled with summer kids
splashing in waves not yet turned violent.
In all this cursed misery of aftermath
still strange gifts are bestowed—the neighbor
who never spoke to us arriving with chainsaw
to clear the cracked tree sloping over our porch;
hummingbirds unharmed returning to feed;
the perfect stranger who hands clean water,
tangerines, and $50 to an elderly man
crying inside his car that won’t start.
Then this, a woman finds her lost
wedding ring she feared was as
gone as the Gulf coast island homes.
She places the ring, retrieved from a pile of
brush and tree limbs, on her finger
soiled by the grime of recovery. She rests,
sitting on the curb, and prays to God, giving
thanks for what she sees as a sign of hope.
Claire Matturro is a former lawyer and college teacher, and author of eight novels, including four published by HarperCollins. Her poetry has been published in Kissing Dynamite, The New Verse News, One Art, Muddy River Poetry Review, Topical Poetry, Tiger Moth Review, Lascaux Review, and is forthcoming in Slant.