Recent tornado activity brings to mind past seasons of dangerous storms. But to describe those storms in such terms that every bit of the horror and confusion can be understood by others is impossible. No amount of space on a page can explain it fully or accurately. The following poem describes my experience with a tornado in the best terms I can summon.
At chore time one afternoon the boy of fifteen stood
the low sky with some angry dispute.
One cannot forget the color of the clouds,
that green color.
He’d not seen such before.
But he was here to feed the hogs
and turned his attention
to the task while swatting
at mosquito hordes that rose
and clouded the sultry still air.
The brawling sky found no limits
and fought beyond its bounds,
stumbling toward Fargo.
News coverage in 1957
did not tell us what happened
in some coherent sequence
until the next morning. Roving
reporters had not rushed to the scene.
Several days passed before they
assembled and reported the facts
that ten people died.
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