It was not an auspicious start to fall 2024. Just a few days in I found myself departing a Florida trip early to outpace a hurricane charting itself east of my coastal homeland and northward toward my Tennessee home.

During my three decades of living on Florida’s coast, I came to understand what a hurricane means for a flat coastline: high winds and inland water surge, the retreat of which reveals varied devastation depending upon storm size and trajectory. The aftermath sticks with you.

Opal, October 1995. A picture hanging undisturbed on a wall in a concrete block home cleared straight through by storm surge. A sizable boat in the middle of Highway 98. How the storm cleared enough landscape to give my workplace not just soundside (bayside) but Gulfside view.

Ivan, September 2004. The gut drop and breath pause while watching the I-10 bridge collapse into Pensacola Bay on a TV news report. Driving past a boat hanging from a tree along a bayshore road. My coworker’s description of standing on his kitchen countertops as a surge flooded his home with water, snakes, and debris.

It was 2004 or the next season that I gave up the “clear and return the outdoor living stuff” game because storm warnings were so frequent. When I chose to relocate to Tennessee, a consolation was not having to deal with hurricanes anymore.

As I headed back to Tennessee this week, I wasn’t worried about my destination. I was worried about Florida. CAT 4 winds and a 20-foot storm surge. For Tennessee I expected ‘hurricane remnant inconvenience.” Because hurricane devastation happens in Florida. And yet.

I was not prepared for the effects of a hurricane on Tennessee’s terrain, already rain-soaked from another system. Helene rushed in with wind and more water, toppling trees at the root, knocking out power, running water down, down, down into valleys, filling rivers beyond capacity and up to historic levels with power to take out utilities, homes, buildings, mountainsides, roads. I was not prepared to see the roiling muddy water over roads, swathes of Interstate washing away, bridges collapsing, people trapped in and by high water. I was not prepared to witness the washing away of towns, to hear (again) of people stranded in and on buildings, to see the kind of devastation I thought isolated to beach communities or just inland from them. But I was prepared for the way the community has responded: with heart and hope and professionalism.

As I write, I’ve wrapped up a full day of reaching out to more than half of our members, primarily in our East and Northeast regions, where I’d seen damage or heard that damage may have been possible. I’ve heard back from most of them and so far it’s mostly good news (all safe) with a few worries for family or friends. Some of those I spoke with indicated a strong interest in helping others. We will seek to discover ways we can help. The recovery will take time, and needs will shift. I’m certain we will find ways we can support our communities in need.

Disaster is a strange creature. It morphs time fast and slow, and it exists as a chaotic microcosm of normal living. Normal is recovery’s north star. As we enter fall, we have a lot of “normal” to offer our community. The society is launching a host of contests right now: our annual Student Poetry contests and our new Tennessee Collegiate Poetry Contest are open, our 68th Annual Festival Poetry contests open for submission October 1, and our new Tennessee Visions Cover Art Contest opens October 15. Our members-only contests and regional groups continue. During our October statewide member meeting, Joanna Grisham will invite us to step out of the present and mine the past for evocative poems. And we’ll continue to highlight our authors as their books launch. (Check out our bookstore to discover what’s already available from our member authors.)

Let us spend this fall in reflection—on the curiosities of weather, the vagaries of destruction, and the possibilities for and beauty of recovery. Let us help those in need. Let us feel and take time to process. Let us find joy in all that feels normal.

Curious about PST? Join us at a meeting or event, or take the plunge and join us for our 71st year. Reach out anytime. I hope to see you soon at a PST event.

With somber gratitude and hope—
Lisa Kamolnick
President, Poetry Society of Tennessee