Cyclone

The sky has begun to swirl above us;
it is time to run, to hide, seek shelter.
The hurricane evacuation route
stretches silently, ominously fore
and aft, as mothers and fathers drive on,
tense-lipped, tight-fisted, eyes glancing up high
to calculate how much time we have and
flickering over the shoulder again
to the mile-marker, how far to safety.
Even the children are quiet here now,
feeling the pressure, the waiting, the fear;
all families must race home if they can,
to protect the homestead, the house, the farm,
or race inland, out of the forecast path,
towards the protection of some school gym
or basement, or some cafeteria,
where the fright echoes all the more loudly
in the hushed silence and thin wails of the young
too small to verbalize, seeking comfort.
Wind that blew now roars, shrieks, whistles, and groans
with all the weight of the world on her back,
pushing forward, crashing through obstacles,
dragging along trees and rivers and bikes,
and spinning off tornadoes in her wake;
one twister eats up a large trailer park,
another just dances across the top
of a forest without even touching,
without even setting down there at all.
Have you ever stood in the quiet eye
at the center of a small hurricane?
Even a tiny tropical cyclone
is devastating on the rough edges,
but nothing is so eerie as silence
at the smooth heart of a wild raging storm.
In moments we plunge back in to the wind
again, the rain, the storm still whipping round,
still battering, still flapping, fluttering
branches and road signs falling from her skirts
as the tempest pushes deeper inland
to vent her spleen on the land with a will
until she tires herself out and sleeps,
or returns to the sea from whence she came.