Cataracts and Hurricanoes, by Joseph O'Brien

—for Poff 

We settled to great small talk on the back porch

Despite green skies and scratchy radio warnings;

The beer was cold and the rain came down in sheets

To simmer a stew in the gutters — Texas summer

Was wild with the life of a single weather pattern.

We smoked it, talked it, and drank away the hours… 

But your life was revolving one way, off-kilter,

With crazy winds dividing and threading through

Your attention to studies, love and betrayal.

And I was turned another way, tearing up and away

From Dallas — though at that moment friendship,

A loose roof shingle wavering in the gale, adhered.

Joseph O’Brien was born in Freehold, New Jersey, and lives on a homestead with his wife and eight children in rural Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin. He currently works as a staff writer for The Catholic Times, newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of La Crosse, and as a freelance writer. He has published three volumes of verse with Stone Silo Press and his poems have appeared in a number of literary journals. “Cataracts and Hurricanoes” is from Departure at Hebrus, forthcoming from Korrektiv Press. The author’s photograph is by Gordon Browning. The poem is published by permission.