. The Poet's Beat .

. The Poet's Beat .

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Little Tornado That Never Was

A few years ago a small neighboring town was struck by what they said was a tornado but what seemed clear and obvious to me was just a bad thunderstorm with a lot of wind. However, because a tornado means recognition and tragedy means attention, the citizens of this tiny town all unanimously agreed on this delusion and have never changed their story since...




In Brother’s Bridge the people stir uneasily,
Coal dark shingles crunch beneath their crawfish boots,
They stagger around fallen limbs and tiny islands of displaced sapling shoots,
Eyeing the wonder of it all,
Empty holes on their sub-prime roofs like the vulnerable spot beneath a dragon,
Taking left-over tears that linger in the gutters,
Seek the candles and the flashlights and the children,
And hold onto each other.

A fertile breeze finds its way into the aftermath
unfit to call itself destruction,
But unafraid to meander along the beaten path of its older brother,
The thief with a thousand names that no one saw,
But all blame.

The people of Brother’s Bridge will not accept anything less than a tragedy,
Despite the possibilities,
They refuse to be robbed their victim’s title
and speak softly into the wind the whispers of what came before,
Twisted fence planks and deceased billboards,
Horror stories that will live forever of what certainly was not devastation galore.

5/08

No comments:

Post a Comment