This month, I offer another lovely poem, the sixth in a series, by a patient, not a physician. Carol Flake Chapman of Austin, Texas, is the celebrated author of several nonfiction books and is a former writer and editor for several leading newspapers and magazines. In 2015 she published “Written in Water,” a memoir which began as a way of healing from grief but took on a larger context to help others on their healing journeys. Ms. Chapman has recently produced two volumes of poetry: “Maybe We Will All Become Butterflies: Poems from the Pandemic” (2020) and “Wild Surprises: Stories and Poems about Encounters That Shifted My World” (2021). All three books are available on Amazon. In April of this year, Ms. Chapman was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, a distinguished honor society celebrating outstanding literary achievement. This poem is reprinted with permission from the poet. The daughter of a physician, a heart specialist who is now 98 years old, Ms. Chapman sees her mission as a poet as “healing the world with words.”

In last month’s offering, “Maybe We Will All Become Butterflies,” the eponymous title of Chapman’s collection of poems from the pandemic, the poet imagines a spiritual awakening in society resulting from reevaluation of priorities that downplays base, materialistic pursuits. The poem below, also from the “butterfly” collection, extends the theme of transformation to imagine a post-pandemic world built upon a “stronger foundation,” able to safely withstand future pandemics. The poem compares the destruction of Hurricane Carla and subsequent rebuilding to the devastation wrought by COVID-19 and possibilities of renewal in its aftermath. While most of us reference Katrina in talking about monster storms, Carla was the most intense U.S. tropical cyclone landfall on the Hurricane Survey Index. Classified as a Category 4, Carla made landfall on September 11, 1961, at Port O’Connor, Texas, a town which it virtually destroyed: The beach “was swept clean of all / But the debris remaining from homes on stilts.” Echoing Jesus’s warning to those who do not practice his teaching (Matthew 7:24-26), the poet observes that such homes “had been built on sand and not solid rock.” Despite knowing that future hurricanes are bound to come, residents’ “rebuilding began in the path of storms.” In her concluding stanza, the poet shifts to the aftermath of COVID-19 when we “walk outside to see what remains.” Will we numbly and torpidly “gather up the shards of our past lives” and “try to paste together what we had before”? Will we rebuild again in the path of the storm? Or, will we search for stronger, more sustainable ways to “build safe shelter”? The poet leaves it to the reader’s imagination what building a “stronger foundation” entails. Perhaps, on the personal level, a newly found understanding of life’s purpose and meaning, particularly during hard times. On a state and federal level, a reimagining of the economy, including a qualified workforce, educational attainment, and innovation, improved and sustainable health care. Perhaps, globally, a vision of a financially inclusive world, eliminating the discrepancies between the developed and the developing world. Overall, a recognition of the need for strong partnerships between all levels of government and health care practitioners on the ground. Whatever the strategies, the poet makes a powerful case for a solid rock foundation “where we may all build safe shelter together.”

The Aftermath

After Carla, when the winds stopped howling
And the rains at last relented
We walked outside cautiously to see
What was left and what survived
It was impossible to predict the fate
Of trees and houses and even people
Foolish enough to party during the storm

Even as we stepped through the soggy ruins
All our neighbors started hauling limbs
That very day and made plans to rebuild
On the footprint where their houses had been

On the beach, which was swept clean of all
But the debris remaining from homes on stilts
That had been built on sand and not solid rock
As the Bible had warned the foolish builders
The tide crept in placidly as though regretful
It had unleashed its fearsome forces so strongly
As the pelicans and gulls reclaimed the shore

This was hardly the first storm to hit the coast
And it would not be the last as we all knew
And yet the rebuilding began in the path of storms
Despite all the evidence in sight

And so when the waves of the virus subside
Will we walk outside to see what remains
Will we gather up the shards of our past lives
And try to paste together what we had before
Will we rebuild again in the path of the storm
Or will we search for a stronger foundation
Where we may all build safe shelter together

— Carol Flake Chapman
    Austin, TX