Poetic License: ‘The Passionate Evacuee to His Beneficiary: Return We Must to Sanibel’
Return we must to Sanibel
And live again it’s magic spell
We’ll help our paradise isle revive
When our insurance checks arrive.
On Periwinkle we’ll clear the path
Of devastation from Ian’s wrath,
Restore the canopy and bowers
With palms and trees and tropic flowers
And Ian left upon our beach
New treasures of shells in easy reach,
Perhaps sand dollars bleached and whole
Will help us pay the causeway toll.
When all debris is chipped or burned
We’ll not forget the lessons learned:
Don’t plant a tree that can’t withstand
The power of a hurricane hand;
Don’t build a home ignoring codes
Then lose all you have when it implodes;
Empty that freezer, don’t stay and wait
When sheriffs say “Evacuate.”
So come, once more we’ll ride
And watch the pelicans dip and glide
Along the causeway — then we’ll begin
With our high-rise bridge back in
To build anew in paradise,
Watching blue tarps fall, pool cages rise;
On a gentler wiser isle we’ll dwell —
Return we must to Sanibel.