Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The Work to Do

In the end,
the job required
local kids to run
together around
the clock, more
watching the swirling
blizzard than working.

In other ways,
the 24 men and 43 women as well
as people who could not
pitch in tossed dirt hurriedly
through the towns.

Build a gray sky
in the background! The snow
moving along, it needed to be
miles above catastrophe.

This scene helped the
unrelenting volunteers
for days. Try to avoid the
boots and coats tossed into
the air. Everyone knew equally
the next person. Mothers
and fathers weighted
with foreboding had to
save the last-standing friends
and neighbors rising against
complete strangers racing to
a late-spring stretch of  water.
From the first two paragraphs of The Weather of the Future, by Hiedi Cullen, excerpted in the New York Times.