Shiver, then hug your sleeveless arms

Poem: "Tornado Weather" by Vincent Wixon, from The Square Grove: Poems.

Tornado Weather (listen to the poem)

1. Clouds build all day, hold west of the section. Plowing east he feels them piling darker, deeper. Wind through ankle high corn comes cold, dries his back, and he pushes the throttle a notch, checks the hills blurring between the wheels. At the field's end he raises the shovels, as first drops darken his shirt. He shifts into high and opens the engine for home. The rain thickens, turns hard, pings off the tractor, bounces on the road, stings his bent head and back. He pulls under the cottonwood, covers the stack with a can, and sprints for the barn.

2. Clouds hang low and come on— a black-green curtain wide as sky. The high leaves of the cottonwoods shudder for the first time all day. Women stand on their porches and the air turns cool. They shiver, hug their sleeveless arms, and listen for the tractor-whine of their husbands leaving the fields. They call the children from the barn, and turn inside to switch on the radio.

Photo of the wall cloud which spawned the June 20, 1957 tornado in Fargo, North Dakota which killed thirteen. (from The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead)