Leaving Rhode Island: Tara

If you go into the tornado

You will not end up in Oz

 

Actually—

 

You will find yourself

Changing from color

To black and white

 

The back of your hands

Will heat up

And your face will go cold

And you won’t be able to close your eyes

No matter what you see

 

From the top of the tornado

You can see Rhode Island

Even though you know

That can’t be it

 

Rhode Island is too far away to see

Even from the top of a tornado

And yet…

 

There it is

 

Glimmering

Glistening

Glowing in the distance

Like a pretty girl

Waiting for somebody to dance with her

 

You go around and around

And you leave your hands up

So little things

Can find their way into your palms

And your hair

 

Birds’ nests

Thimbles

Wedding rings

 

You expect to die, but you don’t

Or maybe you do

But you don’t know it

Because dying doesn’t hurt

Like you thought it would

 

You reach out your arms to Rhode Island

Wanting to touch a part of it

Before the wind dies down

And you die with it

 

You’d let your hands run over the potholes in the roads

And the taxes

And the corruption

And the eroding coastline

And you’d push it all back

Back, back, back

Into somewhere else

 

Nowhere in particular

Just…somewhere else

 

Then you could leave for good

Thinking—

 

Well, I did something at least

 

Because you can only measure how much you lived

By how much good you did

And up until you went into the tornado

The answer was—Not much at all

 

So here, with your last act

From a high, high perch

You push away the troubles

Of the people back home

 

And you think—There

 

There, there

 

Now I can go