emergency poem

“After hundred of times of similar thunderstorms approaching…
you see them pass, you kind of get jaundiced about the warnings
and tend not to give them the weight you probably should”
– Jeff Lehr, reporter at The Joplin Globe

first week on campus an air horn
sounds at noon – the screech & wail of
an angry warning that can’t be ignored –
commonplace as earthquake drills
interrupting my youth (duck & cover on cue)

if it were real, an email
would have confirmed it;
I forego making phone calls
every Wednesday at lunch,
fall into an uneasy routine

so that when funnels do touch
down in Greenbrier, I don’t bat
an eye about showing up to meet
my coach at the rec center across
the road, the health club emptied

of all activity, when we find each other
he fingers a mass of swirling clouds
heading south towards town on a flatscreen
– all events on hold he’s been charged
with gathering up stray students, gym rats

huddled in the hall until the storm blows over
but I’d rather be crushed in my own home
with the one I love then be caught
dead remote tweeting about tree fall
or power outage – common sense

says the safest place in a storm
is on a highway, never mind
the part about lightning vs. tornado
strike – “I’m not responsible”
my trainer says outright – having made

one ill-founded decision to shift
from Lone Star to Razorback State,
what’s one more calculated risk?
given the gamble to escape Oz and
find a way back to Kansas –

wouldn’t we all take our chances?