Thursday, April 02, 2009

Pearl of darkness

A speck of dust, wrongly led. Usually by a shadowy friend, the lighting is very odd when it's time for a tornado. Who knows how you get a friend like that. Usually like an odd family heirloom, no one knows from where or why or how, but a presence is there now, accepted as part of the landscape.

There are those who will tell you pretty stories of an out-of-place grain of sand and a pearl, but that is not our story. Ours is a story of a speck of dust, led awry.

I do not know the physics of tornadoes, I do not know how warm and cold and high and low and wind and dust manage to dance together. But I am from the Midwest, I know the drills, I have spent time in basements. I have felt the chaotic swirl of that tornado for years, lived with its threat, its promise of destruction my darkest companion.

How have I really lived with it? I have dressed it up during the off seasons to take it out, decade and music helping me choose its accessories.

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