WEBVTT

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So Sarah mentioned Steve Orlen,
who one of my first poetry

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teachers when I
was in grad school

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studying in the MFA program
at Warren Wilson College.

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And so I was thinking
about him today

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while I was sitting by the
Steve Orlen Fountain over there

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and thought I would
read one of his poems

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that Sarah helped me track
down a different version of it.

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This is "Hurricane."

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When his father says
think before you speak

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It's like telling a clown
to be serious for once

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Like telling an actor to
freeze long moments on a stage

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and reconsider the
lines he's memorized

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Like telling the color yellow
to tone it down for the funeral

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The boy is 11

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It's hard to think with
the noisy rain still

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coming down in buckets

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Last night a hurricane
slammed the street

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And in the morning,
the boy's uncle stopped

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by in a canoe waving a paddle

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The big trees were upended

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Everyone could see
what made a tree a tree

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Across the street in front of
the pharmacy with his friends

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Someone's blonde, beautiful
visiting older sister

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leaned down and
kissed him on the lips

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All stories explosive
as storm or ordinary

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as a walk lose in the telling

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Lose everything in fact

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The lips go slack

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The clean smell of the small
puff of breath dissolves

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His uncle is a man
who works in a garage

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What's left is a great
noise in the night

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That took all the
other noise away

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