Memoirs

2024    
   
A dream befell me as I slept    
of funnel cloud...aspin;    
long latent in my mind, it kept,    
until it might begin.      
   
It gave me scenes of wrack and rout    
by dark tornadic force,    
and as it smashed its course about    
I felt a dread remorse.    
   
I knew I was within its path    
so to a car I fled    
and belted in before the wrath    
where Mother Nature tread.    
   
And as the car began to lift,    
aswirl and abrupt,    
that narrative was cast adrift    
when eyelids were...re-upped...    
   
and consciousness made its return    
as if to cheat my doom,    
wherein I hide, then crash and burn,    
while sleeping in my room.    
   
1972    
   
It was a fear I thought long past    
left from a mighty storm    
where school kids had felt the blast    
of classrooms losing form.    
   
And afterward we told our mom    
we feared the wind would come,    
as we slept, like a nightmare bomb,    
with not a clue where from.    
   
2024    
   
And no clue now about a fear    
as old as second grade;
a lurking trauma souvenir...    
from memory's blockade.    
   
Full fifty years it stayed inert.    
What brought it to the fore?    
Why would a night of rest alert    
me to a bygone roar?    
   
Perchance dreams dance in retrospect    
and with the years conflate    
with memories... to circumspect...    
experience from fate.