Chaff

"The stars are threshed, and the souls are threshed from their husks."

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Grapeshot

The tin can which houses me is a rain drum, and so I keep one eye on the stove and the other on the boiling skies. This very morning, the crows brought in a green dawn to wake me, and hail. All my books danced off the table. The air was the color of juniper needles and pale berries swung from the evergreen air. The roar inside my little tin fortress compelled me weather-ward. Again, I bore lonely witness to god’s inclemency. Even the ducks had found shelter in an old tea-kettle. No hailstone found my flesh though I stood stone still. In fifteen minutes it had passed. An hour later the storm tipped over church spires in Lawrence, Kansas and I was asleep.