for Ellyn
Sure sometimes Wisconsin gets cold in the summer, jacket-weather cold,
but almost always the end of August is muggy hot
and the machines we need to do our jobs so often stop.
They just stop. They take the pages we labored over,
every policy researched and thought through, assignments shaped
for permanent learning, an ongoing attempt to balance love
of students with love of subject, excellence and kindness weighted
the same. Those very pages—stuck together like hands in gloves.
Like makeup slathered on. Like sandwiches. Or shredded like potatoes.
Or torn like deckle edges. Or folded up like accordion pleats.
So just this once dear universe, benevolent being, ghosts,
please let the stupid printer simply print. Extra seals
of blessing might include collating and stapling. Thanks.
Honestly, this small thing would be enough for today.
(potential part 2--a prayer for actually staying alive during our 4th COVID semester)
________
I don’t think it was a funnel cloud I saw, but
it was black and the sky was swirly and it was at least
a protuberance on the belly of the sky, a bump
that got sucked back up before I plunged ahead and passed
under it. Trees were thrashing and arcing, deep
ceremonial bows to the east, to the west. Metal chairs
and a table flew in front of me; I skirted them, aware
it might have made more sense to back up,
go around the block. But I just wanted to get home.
“Holy fuck,” I said to my son. “Power’s out,” he said.
We might drive around a bit, charge our devices, scope
out the damage. We might wait until everything’s dead.
I used to have recurring dreams, when I lived in a trailer,
of tornados peeling the roof back like a sardine can,
lifting me gently in my bed. I always hovered at the roofline.
Nothing like that’s happened to me in real life. Not ever.
marniere 