Engulfed

[Alic Elliot]

The naked air ran off
as the rain clouds drop their water gowns, overflow the river mouth.
This first stanza sets the stage for something serious. I like it.

The nearby town carved into the land
slides off the bedrock and memory.
The old woman sails away on shingles,
never found, burying debris. Going from the big-picture destruction to the loss of a singular human life was a nice thing to do here. To me, at least, it funnels the emotion from the abstract empathy one feels when seeing a disaster to the concrete sadness one feels when bodies of dead people, mangled, are displayed on news screens.

More hurricanes this year.
Too much rain
drowned the crop.

They'll pay the higher price
to make up the loss. Is this higher price money? Or something else? And who is "they"? 

Is this poem about Hurricane Matthew? 

Stanza 2 is my favourite. The loss of property and homes, then narrowed to the loss of a life was sobering, to say the very least.