Natural Disaster

Boy


The winds coming can be heard from far off. 
You see the clouds getting sickly and purple with excitement on the horizon:
To them it’s just like a roller coaster.
Swooping, cold, bright speed, lights, squealing winds. 
Now as it approaches you can see the things it picks up and throws down again:
    Weeping cows, red umbrellas;
small shacks, chokes of fence still clutching the ground.
The storm doesn’t know what it wants.

Then there’s an awful silence.
You don’t know what happened, you couldn’t feel the walls being
torn from around you,
your letters, sheets, towels flying around
Too embarrassed that your world was so poorly made.
    It collapsed so quickly.
What can you do?  This is a fact of nature.
You feel the scream cramp in your lungs.

The next morning you think:
Where is my mobile home?  Where is my fucking life?
You say: I’m out of here! I’ll hit the road!

But the roads have all been blown away.

The storm is gone.  You want to cry.


(poems from some time in early 2005)







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