Love Song Before The Storm

We are bracing ourselves for Hurricane Irene.
Hurricanes are very unusual this far north - but hey, an earthquake on Wednesday, a hurricane on Saturday - this is New Yawk, we can handle it! The only hurricane I ever experienced was Alma in 1974 back in Trinidad when I was only 10 years old. Trinidad lies at the southernmost edge of the hurricane belt, almost outside it - so we don't often get large storms. I was excited and a little scared...but more excited. She lasted only a few hours, but I remember the fierce beauty of Alma, her ebullience, her magnificent gray brightness,and the peculiar sound of the air - a kind of emptiness and spaciousness that was less like a sound and more like a feeling. 

When the winds stopped and the eye of the storm was directly over us, we came outside into the steely light. The sky and the whole world was glowing - and again, spacious is the only word that fits. Its as though the storm had cleared away everything - not physically but in some otherworldly way. We saw bits of paper flying high in the sky and marveled at what big pieces of paper they were, and where did they come from, Dad? Of course it was not paper, but sheets of zinc roofing that were caught up in the air. Alma took two lives in Trinidad that day ( plus 49 souls were lost in a plane crash in Venezuela). Alma also took out a large tree in the park that lay behind our house - which subsequently became a giant see-saw for the neighborhood children. This is the first of several trees I can recall 'losing' - none of which belonged to me, but all of which were properly mine.

This evening, after putting the chairs and umbrella into the basement, I came back up to the patio to take pictures of the moon-flower vine in spectacular bloom - 10 flowers at once. It may not survive the storm, and I'm not sure I can move it, entwined as it is on the patio railing. So the best I can do is sing a little love song to this beautiful flower which blooms in the evening - a taut pale green five-pointed star spreading its soft white petals open almost as wide as my hand, a soft jasmine-like scent coming from its heart. The point is, I have done it. I have made my own magic and I have enjoyed it immensely.

Come on Irene.