ANATOMY OF A NATURAL DISASTER
Call yourself crazy, but these swallows in the eaves speak
of arriving, of settling in like flames.
…………………………It is midnight when you steal
with your daughter into the garden, blessing
a nursing bra, holey pair of panties. How you stare, amazed
…as people grow from the ground, shimmery
in prom fronds, tuxedos to praise the raging body
of what moments ago you called your home, gaping
…windows keeping nothing sacred. …Morning you return,
…………………………………………………………………..your house a post-
holocaust sanctuary, plastic hair brush grafted to the altar
of your vanity. Fascinated, you see in the sodden marriage
of your photos a glue no prying will undo: wife to husband,
the mouth of your child an O against the ear of a relative
whose name escapes you. ….All the next year
you dream of flight, of burning and birth. ….You find
a looseness in this, and you sleep more and longer.
….wandering often
…………………… amongst the ashes where you haunt
the ghosts of your belongings: knitting needle stuck
to the baby’s doll, the hearts of sweaters eaten away by mice.
You admire charred trees for their audacity
to reach beyond earth, think of planting beans, of attaining heaven
…by climbing. You pine for simpler things,
whole days outside. Blood, as a method of expression, not a map
of your years. In the soil you find another piece of glass
…and your eyes burn –
pollen, or the low morning sun – you’ve no time to question it now,
what with these seeds to tamp down, one more year rushing by
………………………………………………………………like a house on fire.
“Anatomy of a Natural Disaster” is reprinted from Linebreak.
Ronda Broatch is the author of Shedding Our Skins (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and Some Other Eden (2005). Nominated seven times for the Pushcart, recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant, and finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Book Award, Ronda is currently Poetry Editor for the literary journal, Crab Creek Review. She is also a photographer, and samples of her work can be seen on her photo blog, Ronda Broatch Photos.