THE HOWLER

THE HOWLER 

Always the uninvited guest, the wind
pushes through the porch into the house,
and scatters leaves collected in its wake,
like a shower of crackling seeds freed
from pods that do not come from here. 

Strange, how it barrels through rooms
disturbing spiders spinning webs busily
before the storm ebbs, safety nets strung
among sepia-tinted pictures on the wall. 

What did it miss along the way? Winds
as interlopers are blind levellers–the rich
run for supplies as quickly as the poor do. 

In New York, as in Virginia, the howler
brought in the flood, and left laughing. 

—Albert B. Casuga
08-28-11 

Prompt: A restless wind turns over leaves and passes through the house, as if searching for something it can’t find so far from the tropics.--- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 08-27-11