hurricane

There are voices that sometimes

hit like stones, the shock of a 

world revealed violent after

being held if only for

an hour in something so 

Pure. Or maybe it’s what is 

pure that is what is violent

and we are all of us fools

I remember the girl walking in the storm

One of the bad ones back home 

where the worst parts aren’t total 

darkness; the trees look helpless 

against the back drop of a 

sad and angry sky. She was 

laughing and running through the 

rain as if it were one more 

reason among countless to be so happy

I remember her leaping 

over fallen palm fronds, and 

stopping to watch the lightning 

dancing for her

She stepped lightly in the lake

to stoop down and wonder where

all of the fish she would go

to look for with her father 

had gone, she alone to hear

the thunder laughing with her

She alone to see the strange

wreckage everywhere, violence

she mistook for some power

so pure, that was just for her

I think of that girl often

I used to remember her,

remember her as a fool

The chances of her getting struck

by lightning were something like

1 in 700,000

The chances of me calling her

a fool again are something

like zero. My dad collects

stones from the beach, he piles them,

hundreds, keeps them all in bins

My mom looks at them, hates them

she thought he was such a fool

I used to think just the same

But now I think that maybe

I will collect some stones too