Hurricane
Say it, and I’m in 1995.
In love with the pine tree
that sliced open my grandfather’s
drowned roof, its bones
strewn over our tangled blackberry bush.
Our drooping rose garden.
Even on the covered porch,
barefoot, I was a graveyard of needles.
That trunk, a perfect bridge
through Opal’s breath,
thick as a lie, whistling
it’s okay, close your eyes
while flooding our doorsteps
with wailing branches.
Unlocking our windows.
My father brought me out to feel
the wind razing our earth,
to tell me our sky
is made of blood and veins,
and that’s why we can see
lightning-stained rain for miles
over the woodland. When he left,
I missed the storm,
and each time it returned,
I buried something
beside the corpse of a tree
I never loved enough.
by Bayleigh Fraser
Bayleigh on Twitter: @PoetessBay
Editor’s Note: This heartrending poem is terribly appropriate right now.
Leave a Reply