When those feverish winds came through the June willows,

my sister and I wanted to remain outside dancing in the descending dark grey

clouds.

We twirled thick willow sticks with green leaves.

We wanted to pull that distant tornado down out of the sky like a magician who

pulls rabbits out of his hat.

We sang devotions to the

sky, Incantations for a

visible disaster,

We sang for it to jump in

our yard, rip our Father's

voice out

and carry him from his place at the head of the

kitchen table down our twisty Hemlock Point Road

to Blackfoot Drive

and fill his mouth with red berries from our front

hedges.

Mother screamed come inside, now!, leaning out of the sliding

door with crisscrossed wood like drizzled chocolate on it,

her brown eyes zapping out like the points of our sticks.

She used the word tornado. we only knew wind and excitement