The stillness in front of the storm

is not before it,

rather, part of it.

When the chimes on the back porch are silent,

the flat clanger hanging straight down

in a breathless air.

Not a ripple on the pond.

A mirror.

The peepers, silent, soaking in the humidity, sticky on their skin.

All waiting for this thing, coming.

The Weather Channel named it

Tropical Storm Erin,

roiling the Mid Atlantic Basin

but who knows what she may be

by the time she comes on

to beat the shore line

and batter the 7-figure homes on the beach

built far enough back,

they think,

to be out of the reach of this monster,

born in the stink of Sahara heat,

to suckle on warm Atlantic water,

now coming to reck wreckage

on the islands in the stream

and slaughter our dreams

here on the coasts of the Carolinas.

Mothers not so gentle way

to remind us of humanities history

where a calm peace is always

prelude to war, thus prelude to peace

on to an always coming war….peace…

nothing remaining after

but the stubble of cris-crossed framing,

the rubble of the tresses of what, once, were joyful homes,

now a neighborhood of cemetery’s ,

skewed old crosses strewn in the graveyard

behind the old Baptist Church,

testifying to the circling, temporary nature of our lives

here in the pathway….