2.7
May 2, 2013

After the Storm. ~ Patricia G. Horan

 

After the Storm
(for Raven Casey)

Last week a brazen wind bolted
from the unsuspecting
mouth of the dawn

Lifting the arms of the sleeping trees

I guess we are praising
they sang in their thin
morning voices
it must be that time.

Yes, said the wind, stripping the trees
of all who had dreamed about flying,
ending the town’s adolescent
affair with the grid

So skillfully that

the cappuccino machine
dribbled to a drip
like an old husband

A refrigerator whined to a stop as
one ice cube thought about dropping
and dropped

A politician’s empty face
shriveled from a TV screen
blessing it with blankness

The traffic signal hung there
with its mouth open

The penniless ATM glared indignantly

The diner was reduced to a mortuary slab of cheese
and yesterday’s bread

A computer hungrily swallowed blackness
with a delicate burp

The people reeled
waited for the moon to light a match
and gathered around the unfamiliar fires
in each others’ hearts

While three misty columns
white against the pewter sky
lifted from the foothills on the edge of town
the signal fires of a ghostly tribe
who once played this land as if it were a drum,
only the wind knows when.

Their rising signals told the night
It’s no big deal,
the white man’s phantom power
just escaped him
once again.


Patricia G. Horan
is a veteran New York City writer and editor who now lives in a round house in Kent, CT, where she publishes books that pack a punch thorough her Round House Press.

 

 

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~

Assistant Ed: Lacy Rae Ramunno/Ed: Bryonie Wise

 

 

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