For We Must Know Why We Walk Softly

After the storm, which weathercasters never tired of calling fall-out from Hurricane Godfried, the whole
city seemed derived from remnants of what was left over from ancient Rome. Thick, full scale branches
obscured the roads. Powerlines were strewn like spaghetti. Parked foreign cars appeared at the end of walkways
crushed from the weight of their own payments. It seemed, to the honest, most storm-fearing observer,
a wreckage willed by what they were too bored to make homely.

For three twenty-four hour periods, not even the cell lines were accessible. National Guardsmen were called
in by the Governor. Every lamed intersection found its triage--lean, white men in fatigues, the seriousness
of the hour glued to their faces, inched clotted traffic toward and past them, into a general malfunction that
held more than enough sleep behind their eyelids.

A number of unnatural events had been noted. Not recorded, jotted out in the open. Where the panicked and
exhausted and disgruntled could argue and discuss just exactly the best way to illustrate them. In the span
of a half-hour, the temperature and air pressure registered epic shifts. Winds that chased them indoors
welcomed them with jacket weather. Instant Fall scents released a premature return from nostalgia. And what's
more, all manner of fowl had relapsed. A brevity in the sky gone South.

Battery and candle. Doubleteam heating ceremonies, beneath covers. While above and outside the throb
of emergency busyness, chainsaws, days linked by coffee, brought civilization out of the mouth, of nature, into
the tamed, shared lap again. Still, some couldn't manage to resist not taking it.

Nearly one hundred blown transformers crossed the River Fixed, spit sparks, caught water, touched dead land,
found power, brought it back with life in the gun against the gondolier's threat's wishes, lazy, then locked, electric
and around their unsupported appreciation cleaved the continuous dark from humble, unspoken borders, one
guy and girl and another, each of them persons, who had no reason to follow the sun anyone, since they could
continue to see in each other's faces, talking. The Dark and the Ice welcomed the Warm and the Light. They were heaven.

Despite those rows of saplings downtown, which crinkled without gratitude's permission.