Thanks to Vanessa Valenti for suggesting today’s poem, which appears in the most recent edition of On The Issues magazine.
Hurry, It’s Coming
All here are waiting for a storm
rising up the coast on the weather
channel, huge, ominous. Everybody
is buying milk, jugs of water
expecting the power to wink out.
In summer the air grows heavy
before the thunder and wall
of water. But today the sky
is serene powder blue, sun
striping tree limbs golden.The birds are busy eating.
The snow can kill them.
There’s still residue from
the last one, fuzzing plowed land
with a kind of white fungus
that crumbles in the hand
by now, more like old plaster
than snow. Branches sway
languid metronomes back
and forth. Grey squirrels leap
from branch to branch as if
speed could keep to sea
the foot or more predicted.
It will lock us into our houses,
Vanish roads. Knock down trees.
Make us know how fragile
our bodies are, how fast
blood can cool and curdle,
that we survive northern winter
only if our tools allow.