“WHEN COWS FLEW”

By John Grey

Tornado’s been through.

Time to make what from whatever.

See what fell enough

to need to be taken down.

Or to admire the still standing structures.

say hosannas to unknown architects.

Once again it’s hammered home

that the earth has weather

and we’re left with the rest.

And it’s arbitrary.

Maybe that’s where it gets its strength.

I’m human and I can’t

make things happen worth a damn.

The world is just some laws

of give and take,

cause and effect,

and it can lift a cow a hundred feet.

People trudge the streets

in a drunken powerless haze.

The weather’s calm

like nothing happened.

And nothing did happen.

But it’s the way it happened.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and Roanoke Review.