Hurricane Season


What is it about me 
that craves the storm? 
	
                 **
The stillness of the air before
pregnant with humidity 
that sweats through shirts 
and sticks and sucks
at tired arms and backs.

The near hypnotic purpose
of the women filling koolaid jugs
and coffee urns and bathtubs
up with water, like the ability
to flush a toilet with a bucket 
is the key to staving off
the chaos of the fall.

The low clouds streaming
against the boiling dark 
and dust tornadoing
through parking lots 
where men rush out
of hardware stores, arms full
of batteries and masking tape
and hopes that having more
than someone else will keep them
safer too, as rain begins to pound
on roofs of stores and homes,
and build with an intensity 
that always seems to peak at night.

The shattered aftermath 
of window panes
sparkling and spilled 
across dull floors
like diamonds splayed
on counter-tops
to emphasize their gleam;
splintered fenceposts framed
against a sky that’s bigger now
since trees are stripped
of leaves, or fallen, broken-
trunked or toppled from the base
where roots have lost their grip
and left the saturated earth.

The stunned survivors staring 
as their homes turn 
into circus parks 
with tarpaulins of every color
stretched and tacked to roofs
where shingles used to be,
breathing the acrid smell
of tar, that lingers like a scar
for months in wounded air.
	     
	     **
I have reviled neighbors
who will stay to “ride it out,”
like some dumb beast,
a thing that can be broken,

but still I lick my lips
as barometric pressure drops
and radios report 
the currents massing 
off the coast of Africa,

and hunger for the thrill,
the need, almost perverse,
to wreck, take stock
and start again.


Ali Fischer