Skip to main content

Letter Home

Letter Home
copyright@2020 will maguire

The tornado, an ef3...160mph, tore thru my part of town then stayed on the ground for about 50 miles, heading east.

I woke at 1am to the sound of tornado sirens and hail pinging off the roof. The wind was starting to yell...threats...like it sometimes does in spring, but I checked and saw no trees down. At about that time the funnel touched down and began crawling thru my neighborhood.

Whole blocks of houses and businesses were leveled. Power is out over a wide area. My street however was spared.

As it moved east it mowed down several towns...towns that really no longer exist. Erased in large part.

In Oklahoma they sometimes call twisters the finger of God, as though he we're writing His name again and again in the dirt.

I doubt that. Not His signature. Seems like a forgery to me.

25 dead so far, including some very young. Toddlers. The wind doesn't really check IDs when it starts spinning up on itself. Left a lot of nevers.

And young nevers are the worst. First day of school never. Never held a hand or kissed a girl.  Never walked down the aisle with your daddy's arm in yours.

There are many collapsed buildings and many missing, especially among the homeless...the least of those among you. So the death count is sure to rise.

I was touched once again by the character and the grace of the people that live here. Even before first light many were out among the shocked offering aid and food, comfort and a place to stay.

I have finally become convinced that generosity is a kind of immortality. And being near such selflessness both inspires and shames me.

I can feel the holler of it as it begins to echo, as it always does, for years. Generosity.

It will inevitably, I think, overwhelm those few moments of terror with it's longevity. Kindness always seems to.

But today the sun is out.

And the foundations, still intact, will be scraped free of the debris and something new will be built again.

I am a black hearted Irish guy. I have come to expect heartache. It's just the toll of living.

But, surrounded by all this dusty ruin and all these willing hands, today I remind myself that great things often start as trouble.

And that hope, as it always does, rises from it's own rubble.

WLM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mother's Day

Mother's Day The last time my mother knew me was a few years ago on Mother's Day. She had started forgetting and remembering in the wrong order. Forgetting the things around her, remembering the distant past...like Time was suddenly dyslexic. They had her in this hospital ward for the elderly on some back street off the main drag called Memory Lane Memory Lane would be funny if it wasn’t so cruel. Sometimes living's the same way. She kept asking for a mirror but didn't recognize herself anymore. She was 17 again but trapped in an 80 year old body. A young girl staring in disbelief at the person she would become. She didn’t know her husband or daughters or sons anymore. Some days she thought I was her long dead uncle or her brother. And near the end she thought I was her father. She pleaded with me again and again to let her see that Irish boy that was just back from the war, the one that got shot in the head and survived and kept knocking on the door
3 comments
Read more

Higher Power

Higher Power Will Magui re Years ago, as a much younger man, I worked for a short time on a fishing boat off the Cape. The job was mainly hauling nets and pouring the catch into holds and cleaning the decks. But this was near the whale routes, so every once in a while, when the sea was quiet, I could feel something great and close — but always hidden beneath the surface. The waves would shudder slightly, and though I could never see it clearly, there was the feeling of a presence larger and closer than it should be. Powerful but hidden. Terrible and beautiful at once. Sometimes if I looked at just the right moment I could see its shadow. And every once in a great while the shadow would come crashing through the surface — visible for just an instant before being pulled back below. When I was growing up, my folks had a house near the transformer that was the main electrical line into town. It was a large steel tower draped with thick cables. Most of the tim
Post a Comment
Read more

Someday I'll Learn To Fly

Someday I’ll Learn to Fly  Will Maguire   copyright@2018 Once there was a jungle and in the jungle was a river. And the river was full of mud. There each day a herd of rhinoceros swam. Among them was a very young rhino and like all rhinos he played in the mud and ran with the herd.  But at night when the jungle was quiet, flying high above the river, he could see birds.  One day he asked his mother  ‘Mama…will I ever fly?’ She shook her head “No son. The birds have the air and we have the mud.” “No rhino will ever fly.”  And the young rhino was sad. That night he awoke to the sound of a great wind and a light like a star in the sky. And high above the jungle, flying like a bird, he saw a very old rhino.  The next day he told his father  “Last night I saw an old rhino fly away.” “It was just a dream son. No rhino will ever fly.” his father said.  "Be grateful for the mud.” The young rhino looked at the river then
3 comments
Read more