Lull

Wind piled husks at the door

and made us sleepy.

Sacks of onion hung from the cellar beams

like scrota and swayed—

or stood still while we did. Two

miles east an oak was impaled

by a broomstick. In the west, houses gave in

to vacuum, the river frothed

and leaped, and catfish

studied the intricacies of rafters.

In the sifting yellow lamplight,

a few of us kept aloft

some desiccated cornsilk, a game

for the lull between thunderclaps, moments

before and after the only two hymns

we all knew by heart. And the wind droned on,

filling the air with crescendo,

with an organ’s thousand throats.