Michael Diehl, Hatchet Mountain
Growing Up in Florida
I never woke to the sound
of my father shoveling snow
to make a safe path for my
sister and me to walk to school.
Instead, it was hurricane clean-up,
all those palm fronds, downed limbs,
overturned planters and Spanish
moss and lawn chairs from God-
knows-where floating in our pool.
The night before we’d huddled
in the bathroom, windows covered
with a pillow. My mother read us
stories while my father grew antsy,
knowing the work he’d have to do
in the morning. My sister scared,
then bored by the passing storm.
And me, the sentimental softy, happy
to be together, while outside the storm
raged on, leaving a mess my father
would handle in the somehow still morning.
_______________
Steve Cushman
Review by Jared Pearce
How each family member considers the storm and their place in it—to wait it out, to fear it’s staying, to grump about the mess—makes this poem fun, I think. I like the slice of life it offers.
Review by Paul Willis
This snapshot of a family huddling in a hurricane feels quite authentic to me. Each family member has a role. The mother is reading stories, the father is “antsy” with anticipation of wreckage, the daughter is “scared, then bored,” and the son is simply happy everyone is close together. This same son, now grown, realizes all the more how much clean-up work is left for the father to do. In this way the poem reminds me of “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, in which the speaker belatedly realizes all of the menial tasks that his father performs for the family: “What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?”