A Survivor Viewing His Totally Destroyed Home

Wrath of the Sea

Our home was an island,

on a tranquil, placid sea.

There was no finer place to live,

no finer place on earth, to be.

Where the sea was always warm,

and the trade wind breezes blew,

fauna, fruit and flora flourished,

and every day was like brand-new.

But the sea grew higher and warmer,

with each new anniversary year.

When the annual storm season came,

with renewed rainfall, nothing to fear.

All around us the warnings were clear,

knew the warnings were right, and yet,

nostalgic about what we knew so dear,

pretending to be unaware of the threat.

From far off the warning to evacuate,

reached us in our lovely, tranquil state.

But we decided to ignorantly ignore it,

until we saw the cloud and it was too late.

In the distance, the cloud was ominous,

like something we had never seen before.

It was dark and churning with anger,

lightning flashes, we could almost hear it roar.

Tides pulled the water away from our shore,

like nothing we'd ever seen before,

they came back rushing over the beach,

and lapping at our home's front door.

The wind came up in a fury of sound,

as we huddled inside from the scream.

It tore away, piece by piece, our home,

as if we were inside some terrible dream.

But, as our home was torn away from us,

water rose waist deep and the roof was gone.

We scrambled to save ourselves all night,

while crying and praying for the dawn.

With the morning came a tranquil period,

where the sun shone through for a while,

but all around us our world was destroyed,

turned from beauty into a massive junk pile.

And then the water and wind came again,

there was no place for us left to hide.

As I watched my family washed away,

I tied myself to a palm tree and cried.

When it was finally over and quiet,

where I saw once everything thrive,

I looked for and found no survivors.

I was the only one left alive.

With hot sun, no food and no water,

I struggled each day just to abide.

But when that final day came,

I just surrendered and died.

Copyright 2024 © Ronald W. Hull

10/10/24

You can read and print this poem at my website here.