Five Days: Tornadoes, Dust, Wind, 76, Blizzard

March 17, 2021 / Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Hunkered down with two pillows–“Safe Place”??

Check TV to track tornadoes

It quits

Try to read, can’t

TV returns, tells me maybe safe

Tornados went east a few miles

Next day tan fog–dust

Wind, can’t stand up

Then spring, 76 degrees, birds sing,

sit on patio, sip tea.

Next morning, blizzard, wind roars,

no electricity, white out,

read by flashlight.

Electricity returns.

Thankful!

Student Poems-Three

February 17, 2020 / Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Three poems follow:

Nature

Nature is

a beautiful place

so start

kicking that

can all over

the place

we will

rock

you

Ethan Singletary

As I am laying at home

I hear a loud thunderous noise

The sound startled me out of my seat

I looked out the window

There was a giant funnel

I heard the tornado siren

As the trees were coming out of ground

I run downstairs to take cover

The storm was ruling the land, but

I was safe from the natural catastrophe.

Makenna Byrd

The Grip

As the wind blows and the storm flows through this

Desolate wasteland

As you wonder the numbing thunder puts you at peace

As the wind whips and the storm grips the desolate ground

As it whirls and twirls bringing wreckage

to the sky

Someone brings a tractor to clean up

this decay

For this storm may bring sorrow but all through

the hollow the great sorrow is met with a great

peace

As the family sifts among the rubble and

finds on this trouble at least they are in

one piece

Corbin McKinney

Gratitude and Dust

April 30, 2014April 30, 2014 / Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Initially, I planned to continue my Apocalyptic Planet series, but today’s events caused me to choose otherwise. As I sit here writing this, I can see the endless blowing dust through the spotted window. Sometime today, while I was at work, it sprinkled while the dust blew. Now every window on the east and north side of my house appears as if someone had thrown handfuls of nearly dry mud at it. My black car looks the same. The wind whistles in the flue of the wood burning stove in my bedroom. This storm blows harder and longer than the one we experienced last week. Tomorrow they forecast more of the same.

Saturday I stopped by two greenhouses to purchase some hanging baskets and native flowers. The mesquite trees kept telling me, “Wait, wait. Cold will come again. Wait!” Normally, I obey what the mesquite trees tell me. They never come out until they know without a doubt the cold is over and they feel safe. I bought the flowers anyway. This coming Saturday, Hilltop Senior Citizen Center in Amarillo has their Gala at my house to raise money–complete with a silent auction, food, and drink to raise some much needed money. I want everything to look springlike and pretty. I heard the weather forecast on the radio coming home from work. I just looked again on the Internet. Frost predicted tonight and even colder tomorrow night. After I fed Rosie, placing the alfalfa as much out of the wind as I could, I brought the hanging baskets inside and poured a bunch of water on the other new plants. The native plants, tough, worry be little. The others will not survive 33 degree weather. Later, I will go out and cover them with old towels, hoping the wind relents and does not blow them off.

Everyone here posts photos of the dust on the Internet and gripes about this horrid weather. Although I certainly dislike it, I refuse to complain. This, too, is tornado country. I listened to the news this morning and again coming home from work. Thirty four dead, whole towns destroyed, a new school flattened. Here I see no devastation, only the endless, depressing, annoying dust and wind. My friends, family, and I are alive, our houses intact. Rosie huddles behind the barn, still healthy, neighs when she hears me coming. Gratitude engulfs me.