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The Genesis Wind

—written in the wake of Hurricane Milton

I close my eyes to better gauge the gusting wind.
It howls and tantrums hard against the metal shutters
And bends the flailing palms and scrub oaks. Then I find
It deadens into ghastly silence. My heart flutters
Within my trembling chest. The Eye’s arrived at last—
That vast negation, pregnant with harsh devastation.
I wish it could announce to me which wounds are past—
What it has spared, what’s yet consigned to condemnation.

The Eye! The dreaded Eye! The cold heart of the gale
Which augurs windswept agony through Nature’s torment,
Which ‘spite its acid calm should fulminate and rail…
But it brings deadly silence—dangerously dormant.
Enough, I cry! Before I lose my mind, resume
Your fierce jihad of diabolic ruination!
Its dead calm deepens. Will this house become my tomb?
Or could this baleful quietude bespeak salvation?

I wait. The violent winds shall all-too-soon return.
Unbidden I recall a time when I was eight
And played beneath a churning sky without concern
As I watched massive cloud on cloud accumulate.
The winds picked up. I waved my arms like a propeller!
But then my parents screamed that I must run inside;
A siren blared. They yanked me in and down the cellar
And tried to lock out Death. I grew so scared I cried.

This grim-tense quiet now is what I heard back then
When voices bleakly rasped about tornadic might
Through mustard-yellow skies and pounding hail. And when
The danger passed I watched my mother sob from fright.
I haven’t thought about that storm in many years
Where solid trees had been uprooted, roofs destroyed
From winds so focused that it seemed they cut like shears
And left a trail of ruins and a weeping void.

But now I live in Florida. Yes, I’ve grown old,
And hurricanes are just a part of tropic life—
The cost of dwelling where it seldom gets too cold;
The price of giving up the bleed of urban strife…
But wait! The Eye is passed. I hear the winds resume—
A growing, rumbling roar with near atomic force.
The County sends a text: Seek out an inner room
For shelter till the cyclone winds have run their course.

The world stands on a razor’s edge. I look for signs
And hear the windows quake. I pray the roof will hold.
I hear explosions from the nearby power lines.
I scarcely breathe with every jagged minute tolled
And when I think it’s peaked the tempest gets still worse.
I fear the kamikaze wind will heave the sea
Into the streets. A kraken wreaks Poseidon’s curse!
The lights go dark just as I hear a crashing tree.

Such sounds are heard when distant galaxies are born
Amid strange streaking lights and brute cyclonic gyres!
And here? Might life be born anew though ripped and torn?
Might unclean things be purified in holy fires?
I fear the whirlwind could bring death if that is willed,
But glimpse the icons of my saints by candlelight
And trust we’ll live beyond this night. We can rebuild.
And now? The wind is dying. All will soon be right.

.

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God of Second Chances 

—a rondeau redouble

Can we rebuild what was destroyed
And see restored the world we’ve lost?
There is a force beyond the void
Which we ignore at dreadful cost.

When all seems crushed and tempest-tossed,
When rectitude seems ore alloyed
To crumbling rust and sterile frost,
Can we rebuild what was destroyed?

Though fame seems something to avoid,
And wealth a prize that’s over-glossed,
We might yet find hope redeployed
And see restored the world we’ve lost.

Why should we race and then exhaust
Ourselves in pointless schadenfreude?
Accept—not just on Pentecost—
There is a force beyond the void.

Philosophy has failed or cloyed
And science serves but to accost.
Deep truths exist past Locke and Freud
Which we ignore at dreadful cost.

Prize truth. Repudiate George Floyd.
Restore the morals once embossed
In stone. Once Order’s reemployed
We can set right the lines we’ve crossed.
__We can rebuild.

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Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.

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24 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Your vocabulary is marvelous and extensive using words like “gyre” and the German “shadenfreude.” I detect from the first title there is a double meaning intended beyond that apparent text of the poem. As a young person who used to be taken to the cellar when tornados passed by our upper Midwest farm, your description is as fitting as it is frightening. I imagine hurricanes are similar with their broad sweep and devastation. While Florida has a great climate, I am sure you will have tense moments, since you have recently moved there.

    “God of Second Chances” is presented with so many innate truths such as “science serves but to accost.” Brilliant put down, George Floyd included! Your academic background also shines through with Locke and Freud.

    Altogether, these are masterful works from a skilled poetic artist.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Roy! Yes, there is indeed a double meaning to the title of “Genesis Wind” in the sense that Creation and order may yet result out of chaos.

      When it comes to tornadoes and hurricanes, I believe that tornadoes are by far the more frightening. Hurricanes, though hugely destructive, can be tracked for days before landfall both in terms of trajectory and wind speed. That warning and delay allows you time to put up hurricane shutters, hoard water, stock up on nonperishables and make other preparations. In contrast, tornadoes come suddenly with virtually no warning and yet with extraordinary destructive power. Their randomness is terrifying. All you can do is make a bee-line for the cyclone cellar and pray for the best.

      Reply
  2. Laura Schwartz

    Brian, each line in “The Genesis Wind” is a gem. Referring to the hurricane’s winds as tantrums is original and perfectly descriptive; “jihad of diabolic ruination”, diamonds! On and on, you took me through The Eye as if I’d been there with you.
    The elucidation of your experience leads us on a journey we wish you could avoid in the future! Beautifully written.

    You are calling us to hold on to timeless truths and morals in “G’d of Second Chances” instead of shifting to ‘woke’ narratives of politics and cultural sentimentality. “Deep truths exist…Which we ignore at dreadful cost” points a frightening finger to the current loss of core, ethical values. Your wisdom erupts in this magnificent mega-rondeau!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Laura! I struggled over that jihad line so I’m glad you singled it out. As for “the Eye”… the sense of shared immediacy you describe has left me speechless.

      I especially appreciate your deep understanding of the second poem and my poetic call to hold on to (and return to) timeless truths and morals. To reject the facile, shallow and divisive. I hope and pray our society gets a second chance to get things right.

      Reply
  3. Julian D. Woodruff

    A vivid, bristling-whistling, harrowing narrative in your 1st, Brian. Milton passed through Lake Mary, where one of my daughters resides. They got buckets of rain but, it would seem, not much more. If all in Milton’s path can be put in the condition Lake Mary currently finds itself, “all will … be well,” though maybe not soon enough for many residents.
    Your 2nd is masterful–as if you’d been reading and writing rondeaux redoubles all your life.
    Thanks for both.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much, Julian! I see that Lake Mary is in the Orlando area where I heard they did get the torrential rains but were spared the 100 mile per hour winds and the storm surge from the Gulf. We were fortunate because in our neighborhood which is 7 miles from the Gulf, the damage was mostly confined to trees getting knocked down, some sporadic roof damage and fences getting ripped apart. We’re at 85 feet elevation (which is high for Florida) so we were spared the storm surge. There was considerable flooding and far worse damage closer in to the Gulf. Over six months later when we drive along the coast we still see some buildings with missing roofs and toppled trees. The barrier islands were crushed.

      Reply
  4. C.B. Anderson

    And you’ll probably try to tell me that it’s just a coincidence the hurricane was named Milton. Plenty of suspense and drama here.

    This type of rondeau is tricky, but you didn’t seem to have any problems with it. And let me say this, as well: You sure do know how to tell a story.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you, C.B. Yes, the apocalyptic themes which course through Paradise Lost — and the double-irony of Florida being challenged as that paradise — struck me hard at the time and still leave me shaking my head. There are no coincidences.

      Reply
  5. Frank Rable

    That was some good readin’ Brian. And a close up description of something that Floridians endure occasionally. At first face I thought the poems were the two sides of a single event. It was a hurricane, then repair, a Florida tradition.
    But no, an entirely different poem confirmed by the mention of George Floyd, a name that triggers some serious thought. Both will require some rereading to give them their due. Much to think about.
    One thing in TGW poked out at me. “The Eye! The dreaded Eye! The cold heart of the gale”, which immediately made me think of Edgar Allen Poe. Did you know that in Richmond he lived across the street from a tobacco warehouse? Tobacco was still there in 1984 when I visited. You got buzzed just standing in front of that house.
    The Genesis Wind. Good name for something that will knock everything down and require a rebuild. Something of biblical proportions.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much, Frank! In a sense, both poems were conceived as hurricane poems — during and after. Genesis Wind is written in biblical terms because it truly felt biblical in scope. When I think of cyclonic storms (hurricanes or tornadoes) I always think of Job and the whirlwind. In contrast, I wanted the rondeau to address not the destruction per se but “the morning after.” And not just of the hurricane but in a broader sense all of the damage that has occurred to our society, using Milton as a springboard. The first poem is highly emotional and (I hope) somewhat metaphysical. The second is, I hope, highly rational and logical.

      I had not thought of Poe when writing Genesis Wind. But now that you mention it, the Eye exclamations remind me a bit of those bell exclamations in The Bells. Is that what you meant? Or were you thinking of the old man’s eye in The Tell-Tale Heart?

      Reply
      • Frank Rable

        Well, his work in general, and Tell Tale Heart specifically. It is the discovery of something terrible and frightening that pierces the author’s very soul. The sudden outbursts followed by exclamation points jumped out at me and made me think of Poe. And the realization that this was not a sudden fright from which you recovered easily, if at all.

  6. ABB

    What an interweaving of personal memory with mythic resonance. The childhood flashback subtly echoes the broader theme of innocence overtaken by forces beyond comprehension. You move between the specific and the cosmic with astonishing fluidity. I was particularly moved by the line “Such sounds are heard when distant galaxies are born,” for how it frames destruction as prelude to creation. The sublime, Miltonic verbiage here is so appropriate—probably would have been a bit too on the nose to do this up in blank verse though, eh? Any connection between your flashback as an eight-yr-old and the eight line stanzas, or am I just reading into that?

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much, Andrew! I always enjoy the way either a flashback or a zoom-out (in this case, a point of view from space or out of time) can potentially add depth to a poem. These are cinematic techniques borrowed for poetry which seemed sensible to me since the subject is inherently dramatic.

      Thank you for noting the Miltonic subtext. This is one where blank verse would have made a lot of sense since the lack of rhyme and perceived lack of structure could then have echoed the chaos of the storm. But I was going for something more cyclonic — which is to say more cyclic — and for that rhyme was essential. The 8 lines per stanza and the speaker’s flash-back to when he was 8 years old are purely coincidence.

      Reply
  7. Margaret Coats

    It’s a difficult thing to reveal the adult emotions of going through an experience of incomprehensible threat far beyond the human scale. With the title, you suggest an apocalyptic comparison. “And God remembered Noah, and all the living creatures and all the cattle which were with him in the ark, and brought a wind upon the earth, and the waters were abated.” A holy purification indeed, the thoughts of which are reinforced with different cultural allusions, including the scientific one of galactic birth. It’s as if the thinker is Everyman, not just a Floridian waiting out a Category 5 hurricane. Such thoughts went through my mind, not in my 8-year-old experience of a similar hurricane, but during a thunderstorm with lightning right outside the windows of an 18th floor apartment. It is only “in the wake” that the broken narrative fully develops for an adult.

    The restorative rondeau redoubled reads so gently that the repetends are hardly noticed. Yet it clearly alludes back to the threats and promises of escaping the disastrous past. It recognizes a newly received potential for Order, speaking with chastened joy, rather than hubristic overconfidence. Very well done!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Than you very much, Margaret. I especially appreciate the kind words about the rondeau.

      Reply
  8. Mike Bryant

    Brian, “The Genesis Wind” isn’t just the storm itself, but that strange, heavy quiet in the middle. On radar I watched that Eye pass over your part of Fl. I thought of it as a weather event, but it was a space of dread, where you’re stuck wondering what’s next. The way the poem moves—rushing, then holding—mirrors that tension perfectly. It’s not the chaos that gets you, it’s the not knowing.
    “God of Second Chances” shifts tone, but keeps that storm energy under the surface. There’s a steady pulse to it, something to hold onto while everything else is unsteady. You’re not preaching but trying to make sense of what’s left after the damage is done.
    Together, the poems speak to how we face ruin and what we choose to rebuild. Not just houses, but beliefs. It’s not just weather—it’s a reckoning.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Mike. You’re so right — it’s the not knowing that drives one crazy during a storm such as Milton. I really, really appreciate your insight regarding the rondeau. You are 100% right — it’s a reckoning.

      Reply
  9. Adam Sedia

    “The Genesis Wind” is really masterful. I love the contrast between outer and inner turmoil, when the calm of the eye actually gives rise to the greatest agitation inside the speaker, with past trauma filling the present void. It is one of your characteristic dramatic monologues, but with a personal touch without the filter of portraying a “role.” It also has some wonderful turns of phrase: “acid calm,” “grim-tense quiet” – not expected descriptors.

    For the rondeau, I love how you rework the question into an answer at the end.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Adam! I’m glad you enjoyed the language of the first piece. On the rondeau, I feel when I do such inversions that I’m taking a real risk. I’m really glad to hear that it paid off.

      Reply
  11. Joseph S. Salemi

    Only now do I have a breathing space to comment on these long poems — final grades have finally been entered.

    “The Genesis Wind” is done in hexameters, which in English can be a bit clunky if they are carried on for any length. That isn’t a problem here, since the subject keeps the reader’s interest, and the rhymes are on target. What I find somewhat shaky (and this is only my personal opinion) is the mix of objective narration about the storm itself and its course, and the subjective revelation of the emotional response of the narrator. This bifurcation weakens the poem, because the narrator’s first-person voice inevitably makes the poem something of a personal plaint, while the explicatory details of what the storm does are impersonal.

    I hesitate to make this suggestion, but I throw it out just as a possibility. Could the poem be rewritten with no use of the first person pronoun (I or we)? Then it could be a totally objective piece, while the fear and angst would remain solely as a fright-evoking background, rather than something uttered by a terrified human being.

    Examples: Suppose the first words of the first stanza were “Folks close their eyes…” and the last words of the third line were “Then they find…” And if this substitution of the third person pronoun could be done throughout the poem, we wouldn’t have the somewhat jarring pull of sympathy for the narrator to bump up against our real dread of the hurricane’s danger. Of course this would be difficult with a line like:

    But now I live in Florida. Yes, I’ve grown old.

    Such a line would have to be totally rewritten. But I think it shows that poems generally should not have two opposing emotional intensities smacking against each other. If this poem were strictly impersonal, I think it would be better.

    “God of Second Chances” has no problem of this sort at all. It is in a straightforward editorial “We” voice that asks urgent questions about a world that has lost its certainties, whether secular, religious, political, or aesthetic. What the speaker is really complaining about is the collapse of the entire humanistic and classical worldview since the Enlightenment period, and the utter wreckage that has been left in the wake of that intellectual disaster. The poet makes it clear (with his title “God of Second Chances”) that our course is reversible, which is a welcome relief from the horrid “God of Surprises” celebrated by our late Antipope.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Joe, thank you for this intriguing comment regarding point of view as well as for the kind words about God of Second Chances, which you nail in terms of the intent behind it. Our social order is on the verge of collapse due to some destructive choices by many of the powers that be and many who support them. Narcissism has become a priority for too many, along with the worship of science, the dismissal of religion, sneering contempt for tradition and the glorification of lowlifes who are murderers, terrorists and drug addicts. We need a second chance to do better.

      On Genesis Wind, I do indeed find your comment intriguing because you are presenting a critical view concerning the very “genesis” of the poem itself. One of the very first things that a poet must decide in writing a poem is who is the speaker. Is it indeed a first-person speaker, either in a dramatic monologue or something possibly auto or semi-autobiographical; or is it a third person speaker – that third-person narrator that we consider so much when reading literature? And then, is that third person narrator omniscient or not? Reliable or not? There is so much to consider here!

      In the case of Genesis Wind, as I read your comment, I think you are finding a jarring dissonance between a first-person narrator and the presentation of third-person information. Rather the way some novelists may jump from point of view to point of view in a book chapter which can indeed be jarring.

      However, I am going to disagree with you on that observation concerning this specific poem. I don’t mean to say that your suggestion of making this a third-person poem is a bad one – it might very well yield a powerful poem which universalizes the terror of the hurricane and makes it more relatable to the many rather than just the one. And such a poem might well pair better with God of Second of Chances since that is indeed a poem of general rather than specific focus. In fact, your suggested poem sounds like a poem I might well want to write.

      But not this time. Genesis Wind was actually conceived during Hurricane Milton as my partner and a houseguest rode out the storm with the lights and power out, trees falling, the streets flooding and thunder and lightning surrounding us for 14 hours. This experience is what I wanted to capture – in fact, NEEDED to capture because it was so frightening. Everything in this poem – third party information included – was real and provided in real time, down to the text from the County and my observation of icons by candlelight. It is possibly the most autobiographical poem I have ever written, and as such to take the “I” out would defeat its intent. I wanted readers to step into my shoes. That being said, I wonder if that is in fact what weakened the poem for you? The fact that this became so direct a “transcript” of the poet’s experience rather than a fictionalized version? A photograph rather than a painting?

      Well, as someone who experienced these frightening events first-hand in real time and guided with real information, I think I had poetic license to speculate on the sound of galaxies being born and to find theological significance in what felt like apocalyptic destruction. That being said, I think I will give a try to the idea of writing a similar poem (but not a revision of this one) in the third person to see what it yields. When you make constructive criticism, Joe, you never do so randomly and it almost invariably bears fruit so… Even though I’m not going to rework this particular poem, I’ll give a third hurricane poem in a third-person voice a try. I like a poetic challenge.

      Reply

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