LIHUE — The method behind the muse isn’t one of science. No formula, equation or recipe can explain it, so Barbara Poor herself doesn’t try to figure it out. “It just pops in my head,” the self-taught Hanalei scribe said
LIHUE — The method behind the muse isn’t one of science.
No formula, equation or recipe can explain it, so Barbara Poor herself doesn’t try to figure it out.
“It just pops in my head,” the self-taught Hanalei scribe said of ideas that become her poems. “People are amazed and I’m just amazed as they are.”
If a passenger on a flight annoys her, she’ll start writing about it. On a ride through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, she’s likely to pull out her iPad and punch out verse. Same goes if she’s waiting for a hurricane or two to hit. Barbara typed a 22-line poem about preparing for recently downgraded Tropical Storm Iselle and Hurricane Julio.
The Hanalei Elementary School special education and after-school program teacher wrote it Thursday while her students were working on an art project. Friday’s classes had been canceled because of the storm, so it was a topic that was hard to ignore.
“They were just drawing pictures before they went out to play,” she said of her students as she worked on the poem for a half hour. “It was a pretty relaxed day.”
After she read it to people, she got positive feedback and submitted it to The Garden Island.
“The wind is brewing very close by,” the poem’s intro reads. “Make sure things are tied down, so they don’t fly.”
It also rhymes lines about waiting to see what Julio will do, touching on the anxiety of not knowing how strong the hurricane will get. The residue of Iselle, which shifted course away from Kauai, didn’t touch much of the Garden Isle Friday.
“I’m not as worried about what Iselle going to do, I’m worried about what Julio is going to do,” she said. “Where’s he going?”
Spoiler alert, the poem ends on a positive image. Barbara said she didn’t write it as a way to cope with stress, either, and she isn’t worried it will turn out to be anything like Iniki, which the 40-year resident remembers well.
“We were renting at the time, and the whole house blew away,” she said. “We camped in the front yard with two young children. It wasn’t really fun, but we did it.”
Barbara usually writes personal poems for birthdays and letters she sends people. Yes, it’s true she wrote a poem about an annoying passenger on a flight, but she never knows when the muse is going to take her over. It just pops into her head, as she explained, and it could do exactly that should Hurricane Julio smash Kauai.
“Guaranteed,” she said. “I can see me writing in the middle of a hurricane.”
The wind is brewing very close by
Make sure things are tied down, so they don’t fly.
Iselle is on her way
Just don’t know what she’ll say.
We know rain is in the plan
And she’ll probably dump all she can.
Then a couple days later, oh, oh
Another visitor named Julio.
Julio is being a pain
All he thinks about is his gain.
Our state is being put to the test
We all know there will be no rest.
We will survive, that we know
We are very strong and go with the flow.
This isn’t the first time, we can handle
Have your flashlight, maybe a candle.
Help your neighbors if you can
Maybe give them some cans of Spam.
Remember to stay safe
Have your plans all in place.
See you when the storms are done.
Maybe at the beach, for some sun.
