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Spring Annunciation, glasswork by Karen Bourque |
However, if I had been living on The Mountain in February of this year, I’d have put on high boots because southeast Tennessee received 12 inches of rain. Although flooding occurred on the Cumberland Plateau and drained off The Mountain into area coves and communities surrounding Sewanee, no damage to my home here occurred. When we arrived in March, we were appalled at the sight of a flooded corn field near Cowan, TN where we had bought and enjoyed the #1 sweetest corn grown anywhere in the U.S. That flooded area finally dried last month, but only through evaporation and the grace of God because there were no coves or rivers into which it could have drained. Fortunately, the Amish farmer had planted a crop in another spot on higher ground, and we’re now enjoying fresh, sweet corn daily.
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Lapp's flooded corn field, Cowan, TN |
The year 2018 was the wettest year on record at Sewanee, according to a report in The Sewanee Purple, the student newspaper at the University of the South. Despite naysayers about “climate change,” flooding has become a widespread problem in the United States, and friends in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, say “another 1927 flood may become a reality.” They refer to the wall of water that reached the Bayou Teche from Port Barre to Arnaudville and crossed the ridges of the Bayou Teche, smashing a protection levee in St. Martinville and rushing into Spanish Lake while the bayou filled with water from the east side. Over 4,000 people in Iberia Parish became refugees in camps on a ridge overlooking Spanish Lake. These camps were set up in May 1927 and did not close until July 1927.
Amid gray days of recent heavy rain on The Mountain and news of the inundations in New Iberia, I received a package containing The Consolation of Gardens, my newest book of poetry, and a ray of sunlight arrived at our home here. The cover of this book features a photograph of a beautiful glass piece rendered by Karen Bourque, glass artist from Church Point, Louisiana (shown at the top of this blog). Gold and yellow hues brought immediate sunlight into the house, and a dragonfly in the center of the glass piece affirms the joy viewers will feel when they look at the photograph on the cover. It’s a vibrant glass piece that radiates positive signals, a sacred work that captured the essence of the poetry in which I attempted to connect with nature’s contemplative and nurturing presence. Karen entitled the piece “Spring Annunciation,” and she could have subtitled it “Hope,” as it is a piece of healing art.
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Beneath the Surface, glasswork by Karen Bourque |
In A Slow Moving Stream, a book of poetry that I read at the Louisiana Book Festival a few years ago, I wrote of floods in Louisiana and the tenacity of the Acadians when water becomes a spring ritual. As I read one of the poems now, I’m reminded of how enduring my Cajun friends are:
Although the water behaved
as if nothing would ever hold it back
and they did not know
how much terror they could withstand,
they would not turn away.
This land of palmetto, cattail,
willows and elderberry;
swamp and wetland wilderness,
was the abundance of a higher realm
constantly lit they had discovered
where bayou and river conjoined,
a place where the deceitful water
had tried to take them away
but everything had been revealed to them
in the catastrophes of their belonging.
Another photograph of one of Karen’s glass pieces, "Beneath the Surface," appears on the cover of this book, one in which a field of yellow ranunculus is featured — again, a beautiful piece of healing art.
1 comment:
I love your lines:
“but everything had been revealed to them
in the catastrophes of their belonging.”
Very beautiful and powerful. Keep up the great work!
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