by David Feela
It’s not just weather anymore.
A pointless umbrella
opened to the epicenter
or a pair of galoshes
hastily pulled on
before the media begins the body count.
If relief comes
it’s not in sandbags or bottled water,
chainsaws or the Red Cross.
Relief is the sigh
that crests like a swollen river
marking a moment
where the worst has been done.
It’s the aftershock
radiating out from the sump
where the heart pumps
and pumps, trying to keep up.
And it’s also the sound of a train
racing along a track
torn up for more than a generation
but still
you hear it coming.
David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including High Country News’s "Writers’s on the Range," Mountain Gazette, and in the newspaper as a "Colorado Voice" for The Denver Post. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Free Press. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. A new poetry book. The Home Atlas, will be released in 2009.