Hudsonville Mi

There are bridges over rivers

There are moments of collapse

There are drivers with their feet on the glass

You can kick but you can’t get out

There is history in the rooms of the house

After dinner

Do the dishes

Mother hums

The coffeemaker hisses on the stove

The steam a crescendo

The radio emergency bulletins and

Everywhere wind

You took the train down to terra haute, indiana

Visit family, your childhood home

Give your mother her grandkid and father a kiss

Put your luggage in your bedroom in the kitchen sit

With your husband still up in hudsonville

Until the weekend when his shift ends at the furniture mill

Running water for the dishes and the coffee on the stove

Heard a warning from the corner on the radio

And the glass starts to rattle in the window frames

So you went underground

Took the staircase down

To the cellar full of hunting equipment

Held your baby in your arms

Read the labels on mason jars

Try not to think about your husband in michigan

Stay calm

Keep the radio loud

Take care

Wind howls

Father piles blankets in the corner by the furnace

Mother lights candles

It’s a miracle the baby doesn’t cry

Back home doing yard work outside

Husband being stubborn under dark skies

Saw the fence by the neighbor’s shed split

Saw the kitchen windows start to bend in

So you went down to the back steps then to the basement

There were bookshelf plans on the workbench

And a flashlight shining bright all night try not to think about your son and your wife

And the lightning that scattered the night sky

And the wind bursts that tore up the power lines

At the workbench in the basement

Where you sat and tried to wait out the night

You called for three straight days

Still with your family back home

Up in hudsonville the worst of the storms touched ground

And the phone lines were down

Turn the radio up

There’s a woman who got thrown from her car into a barbed wire fence

She was 6-months pregnant

Both her and the baby lived

You tried but the line or…

I remember those nights

I couldn’t get through to you when quiet storms came rattled the window panes

Couldn’t keep a thing the same way when the storm blew in and the furniture rearranged

I can see lightning there and a funnel cloud

And her mother said “I swear I saw lightning in your eyes

When that call got through to the other side.”

Stay calm

Keep the radio loud

Stay down

There are bridges over rivers

Sirens in the distant

Wind howls

Keep down

Then

After dinner do the dishes

Mother hums

Wires snap

Metal gets twisted

There’s the rattle of the window glass

Bending in

Take the children down

Terra haute

Coffee

Thanksgiving

Stay calm

Keep down

At the workbench

Stay

And the coffeemaker hisses

Stay calm

Keep down

Turn the radio

There are

There are moments of collapse