Because They Survived, October 2024

Lisa Kwong

 

What will the Appalachian children of tomorrow

remember when their families tell them

even the mountains couldn’t protect them 

from a hurricane, how the water tore through 

whole towns and collapsed roads?

 

As I watched the news unfold

Facebook post after Facebook post,

the ache for home grew

like a boulder gaining 

velocity down a hill.

 

But no one can outrun 

nature, can wave a wand to pause 

the steel colored fist 

of a hurricane who shared a name 

with my sister. 

 

I see pictures of decimated small towns,

the crackled roads

with imprints like a million

lightning bolts.

I feel secondhand terror

but can only imagine 

firsthand pain

of seeing loved ones drown

like my father watched 

his friends tire, disappear

beneath Tai Pang Bay

 

Every day I remember 

I am here because my father survived

swimming three hours among sharks

from mainland China to Hong Kong

51 years ago.

What will the Appalachian children of tomorrow,

51 years from now, remember

when their families tell them

even the mountains couldn’t protect them from a hurricane,

how the water macheted through whole towns,

swallowed roads?

 

I hope they can remember

how even in hopelessness 

after the hurricane’s chokehold,

Appalachians still found a way 

to survive,

to recover,

to rebuild,

to live.

 

Because my father survived, I am here.

Because Appalachians survived, 

our beloved Appalachia is still here.

Author’s Note: This poem was written for an online benefit, Soul Waters Rising: An Appalachian Pause, that occurred on October 30, 2024. My father’s swimming anniversary is October 17, 1973.

 

A native of Radford, Virginia, Lisa Kwong is an Affrilachian Poet and author of Becoming AppalAsian (Glass Lyre Press). Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III (Second Edition); Untelling, Best New Poets, and other publications.