The Atmospheric River – a poem by Barbara A Meier

The Atmospheric River

I cannot  walk out of the atmospheric river
by myself, especially at 5:00 PM
when the wind shifts from southwest to northeast
bringing the charnel smell of slaughterhouses, cauterized blood-
miasma of death, tinting skies coppery with bruising green clouds.
White sunlight being scattered by marble size  hail.
The clouds –  hiss, boil like a snake curling down to strike-

A dry line encounter: where moist meets dry.
The passion of death in a dance of  wind:
2X4’s impaled in a tree.
Death is the only outcome of this storm.
And in that moment when it jumps from north to east,
I see it spawning little devils on the horizon…
Mocking me in a brief grim dance.
Toe to earth and then back up to heaven.

It is finished.

In the silence after the storm …
The breath comforts me, gently calls my name
and I realize the relief of birds chirping in a fallen creation.
This little resurrection gives life
to the destruction and debris that is my life.
The blood not burnt the body not charred,
the water a rain of grace-colors refracting

Barbara A Meier is really just a farm girl from Kansas who now looks at Pacific waves instead of waves of grain. She teaches Kindergarten in Gold Beach, Or. She has been published in Metonym, Birds-Highland Park Poetry, Nature Writing, Poetry Pacific, The Poeming Pigeon, and Cacti Fur. Click here to visit Barbara at her blog.