This was written the day of an enormous ice storm that hit our city.
Five a.m.
I’ve woken up, and for what?
The house is black –
I cannot see a thing.
I close my eyes
(Somehow the dark doesn’t seem quite so
Forbidding
When they are closed)
And try to remember where
On the earth
I put that reading light.
Finally I find it –
And then go back to sleep, cause hey
I have the light
So now I’m okay.
Seven thirty a.m.
‘Get up! Get up!
The lights are off –
Get up!
The power’s out –
Get up!’
Somehow killing my brother
Seems rather favorable just now.
(Since he’s the one
Who’s just woken me up.)
I snap at him and
He runs away, duly subdued –
But I can’t get back to sleep.
Oh well.
I might as well get up now.
Eight a.m.
It’s positively bone-chilling
Hearing all those loud
Crashes and
Thumps
That are falling trees.
But it’s beautiful –
Each branch, each leaf
Encased in brilliant shining ice
Catching the sunlight and sparkling
Like ten thousand tiny prisms.
Beautiful danger, it’s called
Because that very ice that lends its beauty to the brown and dying trees
Causes them to break and fall and wreak destruction
A hazard to all.
Beautiful danger.
Is everything that way?
I think as I shiver under my four blankets…
We haven’t got the fire started yet
And the heater won’t come on for some time now.
Is every lovely thing
Simply a disguised danger?
Is every friend a Brutus?
Does every merchant’s cloak
Conceal a hidden dagger?
(I hope not;
For we’ve no Morgana to rid us of it.)
Beautiful danger.
Interesting.
Nine thirty a.m.
The worst is over –
Though trees are still crashing all around at odd moments
It’s safe, on the roads.
I’m with a neighbor girl of six
Eight years my junior, but she looked lonely.
We’re having fun upon the slippery ice,
Laughing as the icy branches fall around us.
It’s only later that I learn of three people who lost their lives
To the fury of the storm.
Beautiful danger.
Interesting.
Eight p.m.
It’s been a long, exhausting day
And as I trudge home through the snow
(Snow??? What snow??
It’s all ice.)
—As I trudge home through the ice—
I decide it’s been fun anyway.
When I get into the house
Glory of glories
The lights are back!
The heater’s back!
I’m warm again!
It’s not until later that I learn
That our power is on
Only at the cost of others’ homes.
And those others have no fire, as we did
No kerosene heaters, as we did
And it’s cold, bitter cold where they are.
Beautiful danger?
Yes.
Beautiful danger.
Interesting.