Tornado

Tornado

She is just off stage.
The air is stiffening with anxiety at her arrival.
The stillness is deafening.
The sick green sky tells of what is eminent.
It thickens to black and the clouds gather in groups,
to plan their menacing disaster.
The bottom of the sky is laced with a silver petticoat.
Much too close to the land.
The wind has pushed through every grass blade as it whips across the plain.
Now the spinning starts and a funnel hits the dirt,
Churning, drilling, carving where she travels.
She does not watch where she is spinning,
Crashing through a farm yard, sending tin roof magic carpets aloft in random directions.
Lumber is torn in ragged chunks, stabbed into the earth, one end still square and true.
She spins and dips and misses the next farm,
Leaving some to wonder why, and others to feel the guilt of their good luck.
The spinning pirouettes continue as she recklessly plows a road in two.
She swirls into a power pole and rips it from its lines
Sparks and blue flashes light up the grey behind her.
Little by little she tires.
Her spinning slows,
Her tight form dissolves into cloud.
Lightning crashes farther off,
Only the thunder claps remembering her with awe.

24 lines