Read Poem: Weather alerts, by Jared Pearce

Yesterday we were in the tornado
path, but it didn’t show. We watched

the reports of other devastated places,
overturned trucks, skeletal houses,

people displaced, and were sorry.
But now our birds are chirping their

varied songs, the bees have reemerged,
the tires are humming along

the asphalt, and the air, so dank
yesterday, is now cool and sweet,

it’s like coming from the basement
into a party where everyone’s in love

with you. Probably there are branches
torn and shingles discarded, even

our lavender crashed, but just now
the traffic coming to me then away

is like the ocean of my childhood,
waxing in, waning away the day.