Tornado Watch- Poetry Friday

This is a photo of the Great Nashville Tornado of 1998. We are into tornado season now, and it will last through June. For years after moving to Nashville I had tornado nightmares. I worked the day of the Great Tornado. No one at the hospital I then worked at was allowed to leave until midnight. No one knew how many injured there might be. I wrote this that year.


Tornado Watch


Into this still warm

Subtle winter of the south

Comes a hard wind,

Born of warm day and wide Gulf

And all the pines and sloughs and mud of Alabama

Comes a hard wind

Savaging the shingles. Playing pizzacato

On the nerves behind the trembling window pane.

"North and East!", it calls

To great conquering lows of splintering and wildness.

Spent in after whimper

Of aimless flakes and crows subdued among the trees.

Among the split trees, scattered garbage bins,

Nerves unnerved behind the trembling window pane.