**
When the
storms come through,
they’re reprehensible.
Incomprehensible,
they come through loud and reckless.
When the
storms come through,
they’re indefensible.
There’s nothing sensible
about a storm in Texas.
They crash
and they smash
and they fills the hills and splash
this city,
close the roads and bash,
no pity,
lightning crackling vast
and pretty
gassed,
by the might of sky,
nature’s power of live and die.
These clouds have killed.
They’ll kill again.
Theirs is the power,
it’s not with men.
But when the water slows to drops,
past a highrise window stops
a woman, looking out at flashes
fleeing north and east.
And when the couple’s safe upon the rug,
they turn like waking from a drug
and laugh at flattened hair,
walk to the wall, turn up the air.
And somewhere in a garage just out of town,
a man steps out and turns around,
pausing there to spy
his world all drenched, and he all dry.
There’s freedom in the reckless things
and all the danger reckless brings,
and sometimes it takes hail to loose us
from the tunneled ruts.
There’s comfort in the muddy nights,
arriving home to waiting lights.
There’s something, locking up the door,
about the being home.
The storms come through,
the storms all pass,
the city gets a shake.
The storms come through,
the storms all pass,
and we walk out, awake.
**
