( 89 dead after tornado in Joplin, Missouri; number expected to rise ) The tornado that touched down in Missouri last night struck a town that I’m quite familiar with… Joplin. I live just forty-five minutes south and have several friends and relatives that live there. With that in mind, I began to write... The storm screeched its merriment over my eyes as the hail beat on its drum and the lightening flashed its grin northward. The wind exited center stage with its opus incomplete. Wait. Wait. Wait. Her aria commenced again upstage, her lungs unfastening their violent breath down upon strangers, people known to me by their proximity to bereavement, by their plea for help, rising with a collective voice! Nature called down her trumpet, my kind, their neglect. Peering inward, hunger infects the air and soil as rage compresses flesh, weaves bone into dust and points skyward and calls it murder; sacrificial blood. It’s the eartH’s prayer that brings me to mourn, not some div
(The Weaver's Song)