Album: Rooms of the House
There are bridges over rivers
There are moments of collapse
There are drivers with their feet on the glass
You can kick but you can't get out
There is history in the rooms of the house.
After dinner do the dishes
Mother hums
The coffee maker hisses on the stove
The steam a crescendo
The radio emergency bulletins and everywhere wind.
You took the train down to Terre Haute, Indiana
Visit family, your childhood home
Give your mother her grandkid and father a kiss
Put your luggage in your bedroom, in the kitchen sink.
With your husband still up in Hudsonville
Until the weekend when his shift ends at the furniture mill
Running water for the dishes and the coffee on the stove
Heard a warning from the corner on the radio
And the glass starts to rattle in the window frames
So you went underground, took the staircase down
To the cellar full of hunting equipment
Held your baby in your arms, read the labels on mason jars
Tried not to think about your husband in Michigan
Stay calm, keep the radio loud
Take care, wind howls
Father piles blankets in the corner by the furnace
Mother lights candles
It's a miracle the baby doesn't cry.
Back home, doing yard work outside
Husband being stubborn under dark skies
Saw the fence by the neighbor's shed split,
Saw the kitchen window start to bend in.
So you went down to the back steps then to the basement
There were bookshelf plans on the workbench
And a flashlight shining bright all night
Try not to think about your son and your wife
And the lightning that scattered the night sky
And the wind bursts that tore up the power lines
At the workbench in the basement
Where you sat and tried to wait up the night.
You called for three straight days
Still with your family back home
Up in Hudsonville the worst of the storms touched ground
And the phone lines were down, turn the radio up
There's a woman
Who got thrown from her car into a barbed wire fence
She was six months pregnant
Both her and the baby lived, you tried
But the line or I remember those nights!
I couldn't get through
To you when
Quiet storms came rattled the window panes.
Couldn't keep a thing the same way
When the storm blew in and the furniture rearranged.
I can see lightning there and a funnel cloud
And her mother said,
'I swear I saw lightning in your eyes
When that call got through to the other side.'
Stay calm
Keep the radio loud
Stay down
There are bridges over rivers, sirens in the distant
Wind howls, keep down
Then, after dinner do the dishes
Mother hums, wires snap
Metal gets twisted.
There's the rattle of the window glass blending in
Take the children down, Terre Haute coffee
Thanksgiving, stay calm
Keep down at the workbench!
Stay and the coffee maker hisses
Stay calm, keep down
Turn the radio!
There are
There are moments of collapse!