I-75 Florida Hurricane

[Jimmy O'Connell]

I-75 Florida Hurricane

Staying ahead of the hurricane
meant I had to drive through the pre-wake
of squalls and telegraph-tensing winds.

From the south it plundered on
through the swathe of grey blue horizon.
My destination overtaken, the rains sheeted

down the windscreen into a thick soup-fog;
hazard lights hardly registered and then
their blinking disappeared into nothing

and out of nothing reappeared again until
the nothing returned and the freeze sweat fear
of being smashed from behind and thrown

into a something, any something in front
flung me into a limbo of panic where there
was no where and no destination ahead,

only now and the cataracting rain that kept
the outside world blind to me, and my hands
white-knuckle-tight on the steering wheel

muscle-squeezed my arms into terrorised
rigidity; then the windscreen cleared and
beheld a bonnet blue of sky, but the rear view

mirror swelled with that black walled juggernaut.

[lizzytysh]

Hi Jimmy ~

When were you here and for which one? If you weren't, you've made a convincing case for having been.


~ Lizzy

[Jimmy O'Connell]

I was in Florida in 2005. It was the hurricane that threatened St Petersburg but at the last moment veered north towards Orlando. I drove from Delray to St Petersburg hoping to avoid the worst of that particular hurricane... I forget the name of it.
The poem recalls a moment during that drive north towards St Petersburg as I was trying to get there before the hurricane hit!!!
Thankfully I made it... just in time. We had to evacuate that evening!!!