WHIRLWIND
“Though I were right my own mouth
might condemn me.” Job 9, 20
In failing August light, heat ballets, prances
tasseled fields: golden cornstalks turn away.
His six year old daughter, with eyes that comb,
reaches through the Ford’s window; planes her hand.
He smiles, strokes her flying hair. Placid sky
splits. Sudden wind plows
blunt, like granite.
Concussive waves wallop;
sound like God stalking Eden.
Cornstalks twist,
rocket;
roots chariot fire.
Ozone chokes.
The coiled funnel strikes the field;
a python’s
venomous tongue.
“Oh, God,” he cries out.
Jerks the wheel hard right.
The car skids,
breaks free
and sails into the streaming ditch.
“Out,” shoving her first, him after,
into the muck.
“For God’s sake, Connie, stay down!”
Covers her body with his.
Terror, like lead shavings under his tongue,
poisons.
He raises his head:
“Fuck you,”
he growls into the maw.
The avatar clawing the mud-clogged ditch
laughs,
screws back on itself,
undulates above them.
Daggers
the corn one field over;
slithers up its spout,
stutters away.
He raises her up from the grasping muck.
Knows it’s gone, rips the chain and cross from
his neck, “God damn you,” he spits, throwing it
into the empty field, “you do this just for sport.”
Spent, he holds her tight, no longer sure of himself.
