Climate Change? Naw . . .

by Mary Swander

Photo: Mary Swander

Scheherazade

Batteries and blanket, this spring

I’ve made a little place here

down in the cellar to listen

to the radio crackle the weather:

TORNADO WARNING, high winds and hail,

take cover. In this furnace room,

I’m alone with the centipedes and

cinder blocks, the mouse scurrying

to squeeze in from the rain.

I’m away from all windows and

flying glass, the silver maple

that might crash through the roof.

Overturned bucket, my chair, I see

by an oil lamp on loan from a neighbor.

How dumb to depend on lines from

the world. In these storms, it’s no use

to think phone, or pump, or switch.

In the draft, only the dust churns

in the old ducts, their arms

branching up, the octopus.

Outside, the anemones swim along

the grove floor and bend in the inky dark.

Once I knew a man who drove a friend

here from the East, she belted in,

terrified the whole time of a funnel cloud.

Just as they crossed the state line,

the sky clear and cool, he pulled his

VW bug to the side, and ordered her down.

“This is it, quick. The only safe place

underneath.” She dove past the

exhaust pipe, crawled and scrunched,

scraping her back, her butt, on the pan.

He stood on the highway and laughed.

Once, I lived above a garage, and when

I heard the horns, ran to the owners’

basement, their ninety-year-old mother,

confused, but still strong, nailing shut

the door, crying, “Sinbad, Sinbad,

we’re all ruined, lost in the wreck!”

Once I was yanked from sleep, my mother’s

hand flying me down the three flights

of steps. This time, the coal room,

and prayers, Hail, Mary, while

a twister wound its fury past the house,

ripping up everything in its path.

Our clothesline and poles were found

a mile from town where a barn had collapsed

on a man milking cows. Holy, Mary,

I answered and pressed my legs together,

trying to stop the pee from wetting

my pants. Upstairs, my father, the engineer,

moved from one window to another,

opening and closing, each a crack, trying

to assure the proper flow of air.

But this year the blows have become

routine—the howl through the attic vents,

feed sacks tumbling across the field

smack into the fence. Two a.m.,

and I’m chewing gum, recounting

other times—the snakebite, car wreck,

doctor goof, the bolt of lightning

so close it fanned the hairs on my arms.

Suddenly, I recall the dryer blowing up,

the bang, the smoke, the flames in the air,

then at age four, the fall from the elm tree,

and at thirty, the drunk who broke in,

and how, from the second-story window,

I jumped to safety. Now I sit up

and tell these tales to the mouse.

His black eyes glare back at me.

The two of us know the game.

Where one night ends, another begins

until all is forgiven or simply spent,

forgotten, and the sky relents.

--Mary Swander

   From Heaven-and-Earth House

I was in my furnace room bunker so often this past week, I decided to work on some tunes during my spare time. Best to face down a violent storm with a banjo.

Photo: Mary Swander

Listen to Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss here:

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