It’s here. It’s dark. The wind, so much wind. Rain, constant rain….
A lake has formed out back where the grass dips into a swale. Water in the street. There was, briefly, a tornado warning. Seems a water spout might have moved on shore. It dissipated, happily.
That was not that close to us, but it might have been moving this way.
Those were uneasy moments.
Storms can urge you think, not alone of thepresent danger, but of the future — of this house, the people and the animal in it. Of life in Florida. Of children.
And in 1919, W.B. Yeats wrote, amid the storm,
A Prayer For My Daughter…
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and cover lid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack-and roof-leveling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
He continues….
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the Elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
Yeat’s daughter Anne was a sickly child, but she became a painter, constume and stage designer and lived until age 82 and died on July 4, 2001. As such, the poet’s prayers amid the howling storm were answered. His daughter lived a long and apparently happy life. Yeats died January 28, 1939 at age 73. Another storm was brewing then — in Europe. But then, if I’m to continue, I’d have to get into Yeat’s complicated politics, and complicated life, which mingles with the stormy history of the 20th Century — which his daughter managed, from those infant moments in 1919, to live well beyond — dying before the 21st Century Age of Terror began in earnest at 8:46 a.m., September 11, 2001
It is 9:25 on this Sunday night, and THE TELEVISION IS BLARING ANOTHER LOUD, URGENT ROBOTIC VOICE telling us that four-to-eight inches of rain have fallen and flash flooding is imminent. The announcement is interrupting the televison drama Diane was watching for comfort and escape from all the nerve-shattering danger abroad in the air. She yells at the TV in frustration. PLEASE STOP!
I hear either thunder, or the tin roof bobbing in the gale. Will the power fail? Bringing silence? No escape?
Call this A Prayer For Us All, agitated and menaced by tropical turbulence whipping empty streets of wildly dancing palms and bobbing street lights. And here we sit in the most fragile of tin and vinyl domiciles.
THE LOUD ROBOTIC VOICE AGAIN, THIS TIME ANNOUNCING A TORNADO WARNING TO THE SOUTH AROUND SARASOTA. “DON’T WAIT TO HEAR A TORNADO,” THE VOICE SAYS. “TAKE COVER NOW.”
Where, people down there must be asking?
The dog, at least, seems calm, under the influence of CBD Cheese Bites.
Weather bites tonight.
Poetry sooths.
O that we could be in Gregory’s Wood now, where it’s probably calm.
But then, Yeats was writing in a time of violence political turbulence.
So am I.
But we still have power.
And the power of prayer in troubled times.
(THE INTERNET FAILED JUST AS I POSTED THIS)
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