The storm approaches, the first since this new life started. It gathers slowly offshore, almost stationary. Winds circle within winds. An odd silence fills me: the lee, the calm before.
I recognize its approach. It is an ache, almost a longing. Thirsting for the front’s howling periphery, I wait, I watch, eyes closed.
Old willows whip in wind unharmed where a brittle young tree will shatter. Many of these storms have come to cover me. They then blow themselves away, and I am changed, though sometimes only a little. A storm once picked me up and threw me across the west until I did not know which way was home. Others have done nothing but leave pretty wrack around me. From five days out they look the same. I was a leaf driven on a westward wind, now thrown roughly to the ground, now hoisted skyward on an updraft.
In the lee comes the urge to bolt, to leave the keys and take just enough to buy a bus ticket to Rawlins or to Tucumcari. I have started over once before, though my old life caught up with me eventually. It now howls at me angrily to forgive it, which will not happen. I am rooted now, and thus the urge is all the more compelling. The writing, the tepid measure of renown, the hearth-contentment itself: all of it a weight before the storm. All this work you see before you: dead leaves and ashes for the wind to scatter, cheese-paper left at the curb from someone else’s feeding.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Categories:
Writing
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