The Front Moves Through

Over the last day (and night), a powerful storm forged new elements of the Midwestern landscape. My family’s home emerged unscathed, but the wind was awe-inspiring: a raw, sustained assault.

Yesterday morning, while I was upstairs writing, a branch snapped off the locust tree and struck the window, near my desk. The wind held it there, pressed to the glass, for more than a minute until the gust abated and the branch dropped to the twig-littered grass two stories below.

This morning appears gentler but reserves chaotic intent. The dank air is unnervingly dense; the sky: an eerie blend of rust and grey.

Birds are colliding with our windows at a startling rate. Are they simply blown off course by the wind? Or so disoriented by the rigors of mating season that they dive headfirst into their own reflection, entranced by themselves in another’s guise?

This storm – literally and allegorically – reminds me of another one that passed last year, while I was staying in Toronto with a man I loved; that night became the basis of a couple chapters in Fragments, the novella I’m writing…

(I may post those chapters soon…)