storm

A demon storm has scathed the land where now lonely people stand

It blew in angry from the ocean fronts just before a holiday
pummeling the landscape with harrowing ocean winds
splintering into tiny sticks and bricks all that stood in its way
strewn about are lost life long possessions
A wailing mother stands in tattered garb screaming
a shrieking sound calling out a garbled name
her child’s tender and loving caress torn away from her
bloodied out stretched empty hands
Her muddied tears cover her face but not enough to shed
the anguish as the wind blows her tangled hair
like Medusa’s snakes but hers rolled in mud and rain
A little toddler holding her older sisters hand stands nearby
in the dirty rain while parts of clothing blow in the wind
some like banners blowing hanging from denuded branches
of a  lowly standing baron tree
A comfort couch and bed thrown atop a mangled car
A stove in the middle of piled debris still with
cooking wares inside where moments earlier it had
started warming turkey and ham and sweet potato pie
It now sits with oven door dangling open
in the middle of a swollen broken street

This lonely mother looking up at the dirty gray sky
trying to negotiate with whom she worships

of this savage storm that cared little about life
that's left her human heart broken and her love torn apart
She asks for answers with the divine grace of her deity
why she’s left to wander in the havoc and this empty desert
an unforgiving world who now seems to her cold and dead
She stands there all alone praying for forgiveness and asking
that her god also take her for without her little one to love and hold
life is no longer worth living in this emptiness
with no more faith and no more hope