Reduction. Nature is nothing more than one thing eating another. We got in trouble when we started to think of ourselves as something apart.
But then things like tornadoes remind us that nature is also physics, forces and vectors of rolling winds that scrape the earth. Elements at play, distant and without ego.
We had forty seconds before the tornado hit. Forty seconds to grab the children and the dog and worry about where the cat might be. Forty seconds to go downstairs to the first floor and turn the old glass knob as the howls grew, to push it down hard because the knob sticks and the door sticks. Forty seconds until our feet hit the first basement tread and we clutched the old cedar posts and the roof above was peeled away.
The next day was one of those improbably beautiful spring days. Pink tulip magnolias against the cerulean sky, with flecks of yellow insulation. Beauty follows tragedy, like after the last tornado. Like after the flood.
She coughed a lot as the insult of spring allergies rode in behind the winds. We chalked it up to rubble dust and pollen. Then the fever came and her breath went, her mouth moving like a carp gasping on the aluminum of our old canoe, the canoe we paddled through cypress glades, a fishing line drifting behind, the lure twisting in the slow wake.
I imagine beeps fill the air and hard plastic fills her throat, and her mouth gapes and panic fills her eyes. But I’m not allowed to hold her and I can’t see her face and I know she is dying without me. Who blames a virus? That’s just nature. This time I can’t find the beauty and for that I blame the quarantine.
–Jim Myers, Nashville, TN, “Nashville’s been dealing with the double hit of the tornado on March 3 and then the virus and the economy crash. I’m afraid we haven’t seen bottom yet. Thankfully love still abounds.”