re: #72 Gus 802

Was that a viscous experience?

//

I wrote a poem about it:

Walking in Hurricanes

The wild power energy calls me
And its siren song will simply not be denied.
So, fool that I am, and slave to the electric thrill of experience
I doff a raincoat and dare to venture out into it.

The sky is solid gray and filled
With a wide variety of sailing debris.
The raindrops bury themselves like pellets shot into my face
And the gusts blast with such furious force
That I am at first battered staggering backwards
Before re-stabilizing my balance and pushing ahead
With their ferocious roaring filling my ringing ears.

I quickly realize that it would be even
More unwise for me to walk very far in such a fierce barrage
Than it was for me to brave this mad chaos in the first place
But still I wedge my crazy head-down way through the maelstrom
As far as the road, and the lamppost there.
Clinging to it as to an anchor, I am struck
By the temptation of an insanely dangerous
Yet somehow irresistible whim.

I grip the post as tightly as I can, relax my body
And let my limp legs blow from beneath me.
I am now horizontal: a human pennant
Being buffeted and blown about.
I hang there for a few hazardous seconds
Swinging and swaying in the hellish gale
Then strain to pull myself back to the safety of the pole
And, regaining tentative footing,
Make my precarious way back within my home.

I set up watch at my small and sole un-boarded window
And await the spectacle of the tempest’s full fury.
It is not long in arriving.
My house begins to shudder
And I hear my shingles ripping away overhead.
The cacophony of the wind becomes deafening:
A tsunami of angry air.
I am shocked to see my neighbor’s roof peel off
And terrified by the sound of my own joists groaning.
My lamppost is now bent flat upon the ground
Even before the front yard oak crashes down upon it.
Then an automobile surreally tumbles end-over-end down my road.

Suddenly, all falls quiet and calm
And the sun quite amazingly shines brightly down.
It dawns on me that the eye is passing over
So I once again proceed outside.

Pieces of houses and trees abound.
Destruction is huddled in tangled piles
And detritus is spread upon the ground.
The trees I have left standing are twisted things.
Their branches are denuded and snapped
And their trunks lean freakishly askew.
My car, sheltered inside my garage
Is the only undamaged vehicle I see.
Many of my shingles are torn or gone,
But my home has weathered the rampage well
When compared to the houses of my absent neighbors.
They were wise to leave
I was stupid to remain
And most lucky to still be alive.

Gradually, a rising din begins to sound
Intruding upon my shocked contemplations.
I glance up and see, approaching with fierce intensity
Another slate gray wall, impossibly high
Huge things moving sideways within it
And hurry back inside my dim home.
I will not leave it again until the storm fully passes.
If this hurricane wants me
It will have to come inside and get me.