Just a Transient in Tornado Alley.
Just A Transient In A Tornado Alley.
Oklahoma rain beats
a hard scrabble on my roof,
and my windshields.
Rivulets of dust run off
in long patterns of brown and clear.
This is the stuff the farmers dreamed of
when the seasons were stingy
during the dust bowl era.
Acres of what could be nourishing
fresh corn and wheat are
being wasted on the lifeless metal
of my car and over the concrete roadway.
A demon of the storm
three tractor trailers long ,
leaves me in his backwash
immersing me in an ocean of splash
a baptism.... Ozark style.
Tornado warnings draw my eyes
to the blackened horizons
I lived through one in "69"
in a rickety old trailer
that didn't get sucked,
after a tree fell in front
of a car full of kids who had
no where else to go,
and sought shelter there.
We didn't know that it was
an aluminum deathtrap.
we played cards, and laughed,
and drank beer
while the winds howled
and ripped outside.
The trailer shook, and shuddered
but it held it's ground
so we went home later
after the roads were clear.
But in Oklahoma...
tornadoes aren't as polite,
they suck freight trucks,
and cars right off the road
if they are of the mind to.
They erase whole sections of land
expelling them across acres of grief.
Oklahoma rain scrabbles hard
on the roof of my car,
brown and clear rivulets
run swiftly down the slopes
of the aerodynamic design
. It's only now that I wish they had
made this car a little aerodynamically lower. My windshield wipers are exhausted
like a madman standing on the tracks
waving at a freight train to stop,
they are useless against
the oncoming torrents.
If all else fails...I'll have to ditch.
I'll take my poetry,
that unopened bottle of tequila in the back
plus a couple of prayers
I memorized in Sunday School.
Then find myself a
shallow trench, the car's insured,
the luggage is just clothes
they can be replaced.
Oklahoma rain beats a hard scrabble
on the roof of my car and suddenly
I'm just another transient in
Tornado alley.... a tempting target
for a sudden twist of fate.
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© 2009 Matthew Frederick Blowers III