Tornado Chasing

The roads are flat and straight

Across the prairies,where each town

Begins as a grain elevator on the skyline,

And the asphalt ripples in the heat,

Cars swimming like waterspiders...

Dead armadillos and coyotes

Sprawl under the wheels;

Cottonwoods along the riverbeds

Release white vapour into the wind

That rolls the grass for a thousand miles

Through blonde beatitudes...

Big weather is out there,calling me on;

Cumulonimbi towers piling up,

Mammatus banks herding beneath...

I ride with the engines of destruction,

Trying to map the unmappable,

Weaving myself into those forces,

Waiting to see that cone funnel,

Silent and eerie,on the horizon,

Slowly rippling waves moving

Up and down its sides...



You have to be there when the air

Turns inside-out,upside-down,

(Green light bursts through black

And giant hailstones cannonade...

Out of dark clouds falls a spark,

Then another,and another,

Showering down,till one flare

Branches out into zigzags,

Then another,another,and,then,

One sparkling leader touches earth,

Calling forth its fiery counterpart

-Instantaneous tremendous bolt

Pours back up the smoking channel

Of its fall.)When black stormclouds

Coalesce,and begin to revolve,

The vortex drops to the ground

And starts racing cross-country,

An all-consuming hole in the sky.

With stately majesty it advances,-

Snaking,mushrooming,funnelling,

Shapeshifting with ghoulish glamour,-

Sinuous and veiled like a dancer,

Dust and debris boiling round,

As the white serpent climbs,

All devilish intelligence...

Afterwards,across smashed fields,

Under the brightening sky,

In the spooky stillness

A lone meadowlark sings out,

Gurgling down the scale.

Everything has been shredded

By a gargantuan buzz saw:

Grass ripped out of the very ground,

Asphalt stripped from highways,

Trees denuded,cattle dismembered,

Houses all swept away into space,

And,here and there, human bodies,

Torn apart by the maenads,

Sometimes nothing left but the torso

Or a stray arm, the wedding ring still on.