Water Hazard

Text

When a hypnagogic moment
Is shattered by a flash of lightning,
An intruder:

Thunder so close on its heels
That one questions which came first;

The house
Groaning under the weight of its roar;

The unwelcome burst
Of adrenaline;

A second strike,
And the plasma-colored after-image
Of the bedroom,
Blades of the ceiling fan
Frozen in time,
Sharp shadows etched across the walls;

The pattering crescendo of tiny feet
And muffled sobs;

The bleating alarms at every hour,
Riding on whirlwinds
Over the crest of rivers;

This hiss of rain,
Long and loud and deep;

The street lights
Reflecting strangely
Where reflections should not be;

A tide
Where tides should not be;

The buzz of rotors
Doppler past like bees;

Powerless and power-less,
The white noise of the world,
Only heard, because absent;

Waiting for the birds
To return,
To sing away the silence;

The sense of peace that,
Having left like a bullet,
Returns like a sunset.

Creator

Jon Vandermeulen

Title

Water Hazard

Description

Harvey was a named storm for only a week, but that name has stayed on our lips since.

Type

poems

Language

en

Rights

This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Source

This item was contributed via the Harvey Memories Project "Contribute an Item" form.

Date Created

2018-02-01

Date Submitted

2018-08-27

Date Available

2018-08-27

Spatial Coverage

+29.922716-095.678000/

Temporal Coverage

start=2017-08-26; end=2017-08-30; scheme=ISO 8601;

Geolocation