The Awe of Power
Arriving home I see the trees have been barbered,
And some have been butchered:
Leaves and twigs like green confetti in the street
After some raucous party in the grey sky.
Seeing this destruction, I expect I should feel dismayed,
But somehow I never do. The car swerves slowly around a tree
Lying felled across the road. Things have fallen, artlessly,
And it seems almost a shame that they will be picked up.
Watching a storm, from afar or from within, I keep my eyes
Wide open, loath to miss anything. The dark grey smudge of rain
Pouring from that cloud on the horizon, or the swirling green of the cloud over my house:
"Someone's going to get it, even if it's not us," I say,
And as I do there is a thrum in the cells of my body, and I must admit
That the feeling is not unpleasant. Far from it:
The rattle of rain driven against glass is the sound of holiday.
The weatherman broadcasting extended minutes of colorful Doppler screens
As I sip my coffee curled before the television: an unexpected recess.
Would my tune change, I wonder, if it were me with the demolished house?
Would I still feel the surge of holiday? or would I clench my fists and scream at the sky
As I see the man on TV doing? Or the woman in the newspaper photograph,
Embracing a friend and crying amidst rubble: is she mocked by me,
Smiling like a child out the window as the wind shakes trees like shaman's leaf-bundles,
Seeing it all as a ghost-dance rather than a flogging, or worse,
Duly attending the medieval beheading, munching on my oily drumstick,
Catcalling to the condemned with the rest of the crowd? I am
No less human, I suppose, supposing this were true. The abandon
With which I embrace the rushing storm would be innocent, I think,
Were there no cost to be paid in pain by someone else.
Wishing I were an island and that Donne was wrong, I nevertheless
Am unwilling to quite relinquish my grasp on the main, and so
I tread two worlds of feeling when the storm comes: the hum
Of excitement and the tingle of vicarious horror, until it be
My turn to suffer.
Arriving home I see the trees have been barbered,
And some have been butchered:
Leaves and twigs like green confetti in the street
After some raucous party in the grey sky.
Seeing this destruction, I expect I should feel dismayed,
But somehow I never do. The car swerves slowly around a tree
Lying felled across the road. Things have fallen, artlessly,
And it seems almost a shame that they will be picked up.
Watching a storm, from afar or from within, I keep my eyes
Wide open, loath to miss anything. The dark grey smudge of rain
Pouring from that cloud on the horizon, or the swirling green of the cloud over my house:
"Someone's going to get it, even if it's not us," I say,
And as I do there is a thrum in the cells of my body, and I must admit
That the feeling is not unpleasant. Far from it:
The rattle of rain driven against glass is the sound of holiday.
The weatherman broadcasting extended minutes of colorful Doppler screens
As I sip my coffee curled before the television: an unexpected recess.
Would my tune change, I wonder, if it were me with the demolished house?
Would I still feel the surge of holiday? or would I clench my fists and scream at the sky
As I see the man on TV doing? Or the woman in the newspaper photograph,
Embracing a friend and crying amidst rubble: is she mocked by me,
Smiling like a child out the window as the wind shakes trees like shaman's leaf-bundles,
Seeing it all as a ghost-dance rather than a flogging, or worse,
Duly attending the medieval beheading, munching on my oily drumstick,
Catcalling to the condemned with the rest of the crowd? I am
No less human, I suppose, supposing this were true. The abandon
With which I embrace the rushing storm would be innocent, I think,
Were there no cost to be paid in pain by someone else.
Wishing I were an island and that Donne was wrong, I nevertheless
Am unwilling to quite relinquish my grasp on the main, and so
I tread two worlds of feeling when the storm comes: the hum
Of excitement and the tingle of vicarious horror, until it be
My turn to suffer.
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