Author’s note: A haboob is a type of intense dust storm carried by the wind of a weather front. This week in Texas and New Mexico, news sites reported that at least 18 people were hospitalized after a massive dust storm caused multiple car crashes on Interstate 25. That this phenomenon occurred the same week that media was covering the Supreme Court deliberation on whether domestic abusers could carry guns struck me as a compelling juxtaposition.
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Amazing poem, Suzanna. The awesome force of nature is truly, well, awesome. Here’s a poem I wrote years ago when derecho swept through our state, destroying much in its path. It’s a sestina, a form you can read about here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/sestina
Derecho
You can smell the wildfires
In the straight wind storm tonight.
You can taste blood in the water
When the well isn’t deep enough.
I want to love your broken voice
Before it turns to nothing but hate.
You whisper you love to hate
Anything wild as water, fire.
Anything that believes it has a voice.
You welcome the coldness of night,
How your lover whispers back, “Enough.
Your touch runs off my skin like water.”
“Aren’t all our tears salt water?”
You reply. “Love turns to hate.”
Still, the body isn’t close enough.
Between the darkness and the fire.
Morning listens for night,
Night for morning—a voice.
Yet aren’t we also here to give voice
To wounds in the earth, the water
We turn to whiskey, rage, night.
Everything is easy for you to hate.
Even the kindling to set the fire,
The fuel, the flesh, never enough.
I wish I could say sorrow is enough.
I wish I could say some inner voice
Would carry you closer to water,
Mother, father, sustenance, fire.
I wish I knew the reason why hate
And your winds blow hardest at night.
If your mother couldn’t warm you at night,
If nothing was ever enough,
Maybe you could teach me to hate.
Maybe you could bury my voice.
So I would fall and fall like water
Or climb like the wildest fire.
“Make a fire of me tonight,”
I’d whisper. “Like water, my voice
Is just enough to carry love to hate.”
Such great imagery about a phenomenon not well known. (I won’t soon forget about water running off the cheeks of the road!)
Thank you Suzanna.