Storm Chasers

by Allen M. Weber

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Even in his dreams she’d not surrender

herself to him. But sometimes her blouse,

cotton white, would melt away in the rain.

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Like her mother, she’d one day race ahead,

change her name, and marry a landed bastard,

before drinking herself to death. Enduring

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a mother skunk’s last gesture, she wiped a tear

from her eye and pedaled past her crushed remains.

Beside the potholed road, a killdeer feigned

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a damaged wing. Mike stopped to save the kit

left crying in the briars. He smoothed her fur—

black, cleaved by stripes of white—then sheltered her

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beneath his shirt. Standing on his pedals, Mike

raced to close the gap she’d opened between them.

He glimpsed her bike, in the shivering grass

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at the base of the water tower,

and Mel, climbing rung after rusted rung

into the marbled gray and yellow sky.

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Swooning over the view, he’d follow her,

up ladders far more treacherous than this.

At the catwalk, wind rumbled like a train.

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Hail pummeled the empty iron reservoir,

an abandoned timpani thrummed for rows

of hard green apples bobbing below.

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Mel teetered on the rail—bare feet kicking

electrified air above the chasm.

She cheered the righteous funnel as it turned

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her father’s roof to swirling debris. Her hair

whipped Mike’s face as he encircled her waist

to trust the orphaned skunk into her hands.