Poems About Hurricanes — Written From the Shore That Took the Hit

Most people who search for poems about hurricanes are looking for something that captures the fear, the fury, the aftermath — the feeling of a storm passing through. What they rarely find is poetry written by someone who was actually there. Not watching from a distance. Not reading the radar from a hotel room inland. Actually there, on the Gulf Coast, in a village twelve feet above sea level, waiting to see what the water would leave behind. DULAC POETRY by Mitchell Parfait is that poetry — written from Dulac, Louisiana, by a man who has lived through more named storms than most people will ever know by name.

What a Hurricane Actually Is

Not a weather event you watch on TV. Not a metaphor for chaos. For Dulac — a village at the end of Louisiana Highway 24, twelve feet above sea level, surrounded by water on three sides — a hurricane is the thing that decides whether your house is still there when the water goes down. Katrina. Rita. Ike. Gustav. Ida. The Gulf Coast has named its traumas. Each name carries a specific memory: a waterline, a missing wall, a truck buried in the marsh, a neighbor who didn't come back.

Most hurricane poetry is written from a safe distance — from memory, from inland, from the comfort of knowing the storm missed you. The poems people search for when they type “poems about hurricanes” usually aren't written by people who stayed. They are written about the experience from the outside — moving, often beautiful, but missing the specific weight of the thing that comes from having been in it. Mitchell Parfait was in it. That is the difference. Read DULAC POETRY →

In Dulac, Hurricanes Are Part of the Calendar

There is a rhythm to Gulf Coast life that people from inland don't understand: shrimping season, then hurricane season. The two overlap. You're pulling nets when the first named storms form in the Gulf. You're watching the track, estimating the surge, deciding whether to board up or evacuate. In Dulac, the decision is never easy — the land is low, the bayou is close, and everything you own is right there.

Mitchell Parfait grew up in this rhythm. The storms aren't background — they're part of the story of who you are when they pass through and what you do when they leave. You come back down Highway 24 and you look at what the water did, and then you start. Not because you have to — because this is home and home is not a thing you abandon just because it took damage. The poems in DULAC POETRY carry that calendar. The seasons of work and the seasons of weather and the seasons of loss and return are all woven into the life that the poems come from. Order DULAC POETRY →

What Hurricanes Teach a Poet

Loss that isn't abstract. You can write about loss in the abstract — separation, grief, change. But a hurricane loss is specific: the waterline on the wall, the neighbor's boat in your yard, the smell of wet drywall and diesel when you come back. A storm teaches a poet that the ordinary things — the house, the truck, the photographs nailed to the wall — are the things worth writing about. Because they can be gone by morning.

It teaches resilience not as a concept but as a daily practice: you gut the house, you rebuild, you stay. The coast is still home even after it tries to kill you. That is not a metaphor in Louisiana hurricane poetry — it is the actual condition of living on the Gulf Coast in the twenty-first century. Mitchell Parfait's poems carry this weight precisely because he is not writing about it from the outside. The specificity is not literary craft deployed for effect — it is the only way to describe what actually happened, because what actually happened is too specific to be abstracted without losing the truth of it. Read DULAC POETRY →

DULAC POETRY — Written From the Shore That Stayed

From the bayou. By Mitchell Parfait.

DULAC POETRY — Available on Amazon

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Mitchell Parfait didn't write poems about hurricanes as a literary exercise. He wrote from inside the experience — from a village that has been underwater more than once, from a community that doesn't leave because leaving means abandoning everything that defines you. DULAC POETRY carries the weight of that. The storms are in the poems because they were in the life. Not the storm as metaphor. The actual storm. The actual water. The actual drive back down the road to see what was left.

The book is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Forty-five pages. Written from Dulac, Louisiana, by a man who stayed. Order DULAC POETRY →

What's Missing From Hurricane Poetry

Most hurricane poems are elegies written after the fact — they mourn what was lost, they marvel at nature's power, they offer consolation to survivors. What's almost entirely absent is the voice of the person who stayed, rebuilt, and stayed again. The shrimper who watched the surge take his boat and went back out the following season. The Choctaw bayou community that has watched its coastline erode — not just from storms but from the slow, relentless loss of marshland to the Gulf.

The published world of poems about natural disasters tends to feature the observer — the person who saw it on the news, the aid worker who came afterward, the writer who visited the ruins. That poetry has its place. But it is not the same as the poetry of the person who was already there, who rebuilt, who will be there for the next one. That voice — the Gulf Coast working-class voice, the Cajun-Choctaw bayou village voice — is nearly absent from the shelves. DULAC POETRY is that voice. Not mourning. Not marveling. Just living on the coast and telling the truth about what that costs. Get Your Copy →

The Shore Is Still There — And So Are the People

After every storm, Dulac comes back. Not because it's easy — the drive back down Highway 24, past the waterlines on the houses, past the boats pushed into the marsh — but because this is home and home is not a choice you make once. It's a choice you make every time the water rises. The community that has lived on this bayou for generations does not leave because the storm was bad enough. It leaves when it has no choice and returns as soon as the road is passable. That is not stubbornness. That is what it means to be from somewhere.

Mitchell Parfait's poetry comes from that place. The Gulf Coast hurricane poems in DULAC POETRY are in it because you can't write honestly about the Gulf Coast without them. But the poems are not about the storms. They're about the people who are still there after the water goes down. The shrimper back on the water. The rosary on the rearview mirror. The house rebuilt one more time. The bayou, unchanged, running alongside the road that was underwater last season and will be again.

Read them alongside poems about the bayou and poems about rain to understand the full depth of what Mitchell Parfait has built in DULAC POETRY — a record of the Gulf Coast written from inside the life.