Before the Big Storm

"Kansas Stormfront" by Gigi Liverant



Before the Big Storm


You are famous in my mind.
When anyone mentions your name
all the boxes marked "1930's"
fall off the shelves;
and the orators on the Fourth of July
all begin shouting again.
The audience of our high school
commencement begin to look out
of the windows at the big storm.

And I think of you in our play--
oh, helpless and lonely!--crying;
and your father is dead again.
He was drunk; he fell.

When they mention your name,
our houses out there in the wind
creak again in the storm;
and I lean from our play,
wherever I am, to you,
quiet on the edge of that town:
"All the world is blowing away."
"It's almost daylight."
"Are you warm?"


William Stafford

Posted over on William Stafford Archives