Tornado Watch

I smell it, sometimes, in between the leaves,

Or in the over-the-horizon rain,

Or under sunset colored shadow hills.

It comes like icy nausea. It runs

Along the spine as would a lone raindrop.

It silences all noises but itself.

It is not wind, or if it is, it is

A wind that does not move through mortal spheres.

It lifts no flags. It fills no sails. It can

Be stopped by neither wall nor weatherstrip:

There is no shelter from it. Though I have

But felt it ever as the gentlest breeze,

But, oh, the gentlest finger of that breeze

Does make me dread the hurricane. There is

A certain kind of wind, in every clime,

That sings the autumn’s last recessional,

That gives last rites to all the natural world,
That ends and undermines all lingering works

Which then must lie abandoned and unmade

For other ages to perhaps remark

‘What folly were they after, that they built

So shapelessly, and so abortively?’
The herdsman brings his cattle to the byre.

The reaper speeds the scythe along the corn.

For whatsover that wind finds not yet

Well sheltered, well secured, is wholly lost.

And it is not that wind. But it is close,
As men say tongue when they mean speech, or heart

When they mean love. So I when I say the wind

Is rising, and I fear a coming storm

I hope you know what kind of fear that is,

What otherworldly tempest I look for,

What ruins I anticipate that we

Mayhaps must learn to live in. All the world

That humankind has built is as the leaves

That spring exhales, that summer raises up,

That autumn dries into exhaustion’s hues,

And comes the wind to sweep them all away.