So Sarah mentioned Steve Orlen, who one of my first poetry
teachers when I was in grad school
studying in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College.
And so I was thinking about him today
while I was sitting by the Steve Orlen Fountain over there
and thought I would read one of his poems
that Sarah helped me track down a different version of it.
This is "Hurricane."
When his father says think before you speak
It's like telling a clown to be serious for once
Like telling an actor to freeze long moments on a stage
and reconsider the lines he's memorized
Like telling the color yellow to tone it down for the funeral
The boy is 11
It's hard to think with the noisy rain still
coming down in buckets
Last night a hurricane slammed the street
And in the morning, the boy's uncle stopped
by in a canoe waving a paddle
The big trees were upended
Everyone could see what made a tree a tree
Across the street in front of the pharmacy with his friends
Someone's blonde, beautiful visiting older sister
leaned down and kissed him on the lips
All stories explosive as storm or ordinary
as a walk lose in the telling
Lose everything in fact
The lips go slack
The clean smell of the small puff of breath dissolves
His uncle is a man who works in a garage
What's left is a great noise in the night
That took all the other noise away