1.
The Derecho brings change spinningfrom its edge, a clock-hand turningfrom a pivot point in the Midwest,reaching Eastern cities in the foreignlanguage of straight wind and rainthrough a July afternoon born to lastfor days. Everything is made dark.
I stare from my windowinto the backyard upheaval, fingershanging from my side, in the suddenfullness of evening,the newspaper I wanted to thumbthrough, its folds of naturaldisasters fallen beside the worldlike stacked cards.
2.
The Nor’easter had left the shapeof itself upon the beachit spread across their lives before,with shovel and plow, they pushedthe part of it they couldback. In the dunes sea grassnow stood, as the picture showed,spare as grace.
My middle-age more dawnsthan arrives and greater stormswait ahead than behind. The yearstally in the body of seas, of plains.
3.
The cracked earth of the Westmarks where the heat priednew emptiness under cropsburnt too dry to resemble thistle,and blue skies week upon weekspread unremitting glareand prayers shimmering toward heaven.
The paper is on fire.The neighbors will never forgetthe screams of the horsesdying in the burning barns.The witness attests: Thisand that happened. The inkof it all stains the tipsof fingers, and so my brow.
Memory, another story, has no placebut inside this flesh, and if I couldI would not becomemy father left to tracehis like veins for the factof the matter that he becameclosing even to himself.
4.
The storm turns lives like fruituntil stems break and carryseeds away. After tornadoesis what stands any strongerthan everything uprooted?The next one will tell.
In the hushed aftermath tooquiet for refusal, life was stilllistened for under homescollapsed and hopesfor the faintest tapping.
I rap my own chest like the doctorasking me to take deep breaths,because the clock isand this body is another walland mine.
5.
I put down the paper. I silence the TV.I put my phone somewhere elsesometime ago. I listen to nothing.I could tell myself it is all there.
But before I am a bit of news,if there is ruinand some recoveryI want to recall
under the treewaiting near the porchand out of the rain, whateverits distance from now,the sun, casting worldslike alwaysout of the leavesand sending something elsereaching. I know what timeit is, and the weather.
***