Blowin' in the wind

a wind has blown the rain away and blown
the sky away and all the leaves away,
and the trees stand.  I think i too have known
autumn too long

                (and what have you to say,
wind wind wind — did you love somebody
and have you the petal of somewhere in your heart
pinched from dumb summer?
                          O crazy daddy
of death dance cruelly for us and start

the last leaf whirling in the final brain
of air!)Let us as we have seen see
doom’s integration………a wind has blown the rain

away and the leaves and the sky and the
trees stand:
             the trees stand.  The trees,
suddenly wait against the moon’s face.

[e.e. cummings] 

Just a quick note to say that, while we did have tornado warnings from about 3:00 to 4:30 last night (and yes, I was up until 6 am because of it; the cats were not thrilled about being hauled down to the basement...), we are all fine here. We had a brief monsoon, but that's about it, although we did see the same squall line that caused a tornado that killed at least 19 people in & near Evansville, Indiana (and adjacent portions of northern Kentucky).

I have a terrible fear of tornadoes, thanks to having been in a big one when I was five years old in Topeka, Kansas. (Our house was severely damaged, uninhabitable, but not flattened. At the time, that tornado set the record for the most damage -- measured in dollars -- ever caused by a single tornado.) Nights like last night are not much fun for me. But I'm fine. The storms blew most of the leaves from the trees, though -- I woke up in a changed landscape.

...and the trees stand.