MYSTIC FLOODS

At Camp Mystic these young women

had prayed together,

on vacation from home life and school,

in the company of other young women,

with the Guadalupe River, horses and a vast countryside.

Don’t let us know the flood

is coming. We want a life

of fun. Don’t let those sirens

call us. We’re living the dream.

My son shared this dream nearby

when he went as a boy

to the downstream Camp Stewart

that had socials with Camp Mystic.

This tragedy, years earlier,

could have happened to our child.

Shouts began at dawn

girls in a rage of river,

little bodies bobbed up and down

and lost the chance to breathe.

Nothing prepared them

for tragedy

though some knew deaths

of dogs and grandmother,

even uncertainty about politics.

Sudden tragedy

doesn’t give you a chance to endure.

It clamps its uncaring

hand over your mouth

and takes you away and buries

your body or deposits

you downstream.

It is a different kind of beast.

Parents are left

to endure.

We all do, knowing too many

people who don’t care who suffers.

As a government like a flood

clamps its hands over the

mouths of freedom.

The terror, the loss of freedom

and life, the not heeding

of warning signs,

These are floods we all face.

• David Lauterstein, July, 2025