Tornado Season
May 30 2013


It's tornado season
in Oklahoma,
and I heard a witness say
the sky went green
and she could feel the pressure
change in her teeth

and over all the screams

were 10 locomotives

careening full-speed.
She saw open mouths, voiceless

couldn't hear her own,

felt her throat

reamed taut enough to bleed.

I once lived on a flood plain.
That spring
the basement had 4 feet of water
I felt betrayed,
as if nature had it in for me.
But memory
sugar-coats the past,
and after awhile
you get complacent
when nothing’s happened.

But it did,

and that was it, for me.

In tornado alley
they rebuild.
Take comfort
in the wind's whimsy,
touching down for an instant
somewhere else.
Either wilfully blind
or consigned
to a higher power.
People who don't swear, drink, gamble
in a game of chance,

damn the odds.

I heard the survivor say
her prayers were answered,

trapped

in a miraculous pocket

when the house collapsed. 
That she felt blessed
by a merciful God,
her bedrock faith
refreshed.

While the dead
were not quoted.
I presumed they prayed
no less.

A deadly Tornado this May: the highest rating of 5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which measures the destructive power of tornadoes. The Moore tornado touched down in a suburb of Oklahoma City, and along with all the usual mayhem destroyed two schools, a day-care, movie theatre, and medical clinic. The final tally was 24 dead.

One wonders why people persist in building -- and re-building -- in tornado alley. Are we in denial? Do we feel we are immune to fate, somehow exempt? Or is it just inertia, false hope, misplaced faith? Of course, I found myself in a vaguely similar situation with that flood. After all, sooner or later it was inevitable. On the other hand, and to my credit, I was naive when I bought the place; and as soon as I could, moved away.

I always hear some survivor say something like this: that God answered my prayers. As an atheist, it leaves me shaking my head. I mean, even if there were a God, what an utterly solipsistic world view, no to mention a childishly simplistic theology. But more than that, it's thoughtless, disrespectful, and -- as a fellow human of whatever belief -- infuriating: because if she was somehow virtuous enough to warrant rescue, then presumably the dead were deserving of their fate as well.