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.