Written On A Shady Porch In Post-Derecho Mt. San Angelo

Poem Concluding with a Derecho 
by Aaron Baker
 

It doesn’t know the names of things and won’t stop to revise.

Summoned, wraith-like, out of the corn fields of Iowa,

out of general error, the oath of the deserted wife,

the farmboy’s dream of the coast, out of bitterest arguments

too long delayed, it builds among the inland prairies and plains—

not ignorance but total and undifferentiated knowledge.

It moves—slowly at first—against Illinois, Indiana

and the Virginias.

                                   And so dusk on Mount San Angelo

where the artists are gathered, crackers and wine, to greet

the arriving genius. Lights flicker, flicker out. The treeline hoves

and plunges in the teeth of the squall. Hold hands! Hold hands!

The painter puts down her knife, then takes it up in darkness.

The composer puts his hands over his ears.

Listen: the dream of the artist is transformation.

The derecho shatters the cedar, pitches treetops into housetops

and brother against brother. Separates roots from earth,

action from principle, the right hand’s knowledge

of what the left hand is doing—and then gives us

ten days of life among the wreckage. Downed lines, broken

limbs, the music of chainsaws and generators.  Said the novelist

from New York with a note of disdain, “It’s like somebody

came through here and pitched a giant tantrum.”

And so we mistake ourselves, fumble and mutter

amidst our notebooks,  canvases, and drained laptops.

We curse  the heat, the power company, the governor.

We try to convince ourselves of everything except

that we’ve been stunned into enervation and futility

by our encounter with the one true genius of our age.

A poem ends. The derecho ends the poem.

 

Aaron Baker, poet

Chicago, Illinois

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To see photos and read more about the Derecho Days at VCCA, see our blogs posted between July 2-9