Hurricane’s Embrace
A poem telling the haunting story of a beautiful woman from the Cayman Islands.
This poem is part of the NaPoWriMo 2025 challenge to write a poem a day in April. This is the prompt for April 19.
This one is inspired by Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem “Song.”
The word “tragedy” comes from the Greek for “goat song.” The song in Kelly’s poem is quite literally a goat song. The poem also describes a tragedy, both in the modern sense of an awful event, and the ancient dramatic sense of a play in which someone does something terrible, and the play’s action shows the consequences.
The poem has a timeless, could-have-happened-anywhere/anywhen quality that I associate with blues and folk ballads – including murder ballads (a subgenre of song dealing with a gruesome crime, first arising from broadsheet ballads sold at English executions, and which later came to America in forms like “The Knoxville Girl” and then morphed their way into country music).
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that tells a story in the style of a blues song or ballad. One way into this prompt may be to use it to retell a family tragedy or story, or to retell a crime or tragic event that occurred in your hometown.
My mom told a story about a beautiful woman with long red hair that reached her thighs, styled in two plaits. One day, a fierce hurricane hit the Cayman Islands (the ‘32 storm). The winds were so strong they lifted her off the ground! (More than likely, it was the storm surge.) Tragically, she was later found at the top of a tree, with her hair wrapped around the branches and her neck. Now, whenever I see Botticelli's painting of The Birth of Venus, I can't help but think of that woman.
She stood amidst an angry storm,
defiant beauty beneath swirling clouds;
her hair, a fiery cascade of red,
two long plaits trailing like flames;
each strand a tale of warmth and light,
echoes of laughter
carried on the breeze.
Winds howled, an angry chorus,
trees bowed low, surrendering to chaos—
churning ocean, dark, roiling beast,
a world trembling under nature’s wrath;
and she, wild spirit, lifted high,
caught in a fierce tempest’s embrace.
When violent winds finally relented,
heavy silence settled like a shroud,
a landscape, ravaged and bare.
Among ruin and wreckage, she was there,
tragic sight way high in the trees,
hair tangled in branches,
eyes open, unseeing.
Winds howled, an angry chorus,
trees bowed low, surrendering to chaos—
churning ocean, dark, roiling beast,
a world trembling under nature’s wrath;
and she, wild spirit, lifted high,
caught in a fierce tempest’s embrace.
The islanders gathered, grief-laden,
heart-heavy with loss quite profound;
raised a glass to a woman so bold,
a memory etched in their days;
one who danced with hurricanes,
thought she could win,
an earthly goddess finally home.
Winds howled, an angry chorus,
trees bowed low, surrendering to chaos—
churning ocean, dark, roiling beast,
a world trembling under nature’s wrath;
and she, wild spirit, lifted high,
caught in a fierce tempest’s embrace.
Calm seas, gently swaying palms,
her spirit lingers, a haunting presence,
woven into nostril-filling salty air;
a ballad of beauty and tragedy,
forever told as a cautionary tale,
always a chilling reminder,
of nature’s fierce form.
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