artwork: ralph murre
SUMMER
STORM
by
Karla Huston
We
clutched together in a screen tent,
nine
of us lurching between
tent
poles and gusts, watching
clouds
gather up in the west,
the
angry wave of them
hovered
over the Mississippi River
bluffs
like a black wall.
Then
the wind huffed down the face
of
the limestone, threw clay
and
trees onto highways
and
shorelines. We shivered
and
while the sky slung bullets,
the
old man reared back, spit mud
and
clams and weeds.
The
rain made sodden debris
of
tents and sleeping bags
while
under the plastic canopy
we
passed the bourbon--an amber torch,
the
burning liquor the only thing
that
quenched the quarrel outside.
~
first published in Poet Lore: 2002
