Hurricane
The television flickered
in the darkened room,
screaming dire predictions
through static
while the old lady rocked in her chair.
The others had already run,
crowding through the narrow side streets
like frightened ducklings,
but she sat in her old faded rocker
and stared past them,
toward the gray, flat sea before her.
"Get out! Get out!" moaned the TV
before the crackle of static
swallowed the rest of its words;
at that the woman slowly
pushed herself to her feet,
and shuffled in her pale pink slippers
to a doily-shrouded pine table,
and a polished pewter framed picture.
She stood there, silent,
as clouds boiled into view on the horizon
and dimmed the light coming through
her defiantly open windows,
and the TV still hissed and growled
in the background.
Wind whispered tentatively,
and, receiving no response,
screamed through the room,
tugging her hair,
pummeling her white lace curtains.
She reached trembling fingers out
to softly kiss the picture.
She didn’t feel cold glass,
but the memory of warm skin,
the ghost of a strong, steady pulse.
Rain fell, cold and sharp as knives,
and her hand jerked away from the frame
at the angry rapping.
She turned her head,
scanned the small, gray room,
and turned her baleful eye
on the roiling sea.
The house shook,
shingles rattled like wet bones,
windows cracked, glass sharded into the room,
and as the sea raged closer the woman
raised her head and strode
away from the seething television,
toward the beach, and
its raging foam.
She stood tall, her dress
heavy and dark in the rain,
feet rooted in the shifting sand
while her cottage imploded behind her,
and the wind screeched through her ears.
She raised a fist, and stood,
steady,
a pillar of fire-veined ice,
and lifted her sight above the horizon
to shout.
"You took my love
to a dark, wet death.
You consigned my
never-born children
to oblivion!
Let’s see if you
can take me!"
She stood,
stubborn,
and watched the storm
roll in.
.: jessdoor.com :: personal
:: poetry :.
