Coming Together: Special Hurricane Relief Edition (2 page)

and
they may dance till dawn

but
they will not dance

after
tonight

masks
of foam

disintegrate
by light and rend

their
skins defenceless

to
the erosion of sea and time;

some
say the wind

won't
be back to this beach

so
soon, unable to breach

the
opaque wall of algae

and
with no wind,

essence
of lightness,

of
all aerial progression,

all
dance will cease

their
metrical ballet has

the
weight of consciousness

and
the elegance

of
time-proved lovers;

their
subtle gestures

forever
imprinted in their skin

will
resist the attrition of reality

and
seek the following night

in
successive curves of the body

that
will define their own

as
they melt in a chorus:

dance
and remembrance.

~
~ ~ ~

The
Fury

©
Sherry Hawk

I
looked out the window at the sky growing dark with storm clouds, and
uneasily wondered why my husband wasn't home yet. I love storms, but
this one had been called dangerous more than once on the weather
forecasts, and the scenes of devastation it had left behind in the
areas it had already gone through were frightening. The wind whistled
through the trees next to the house, growing louder and louder every
minute, starting to become almost a muted roar. I paced, watchful and
worried, in front of the big picture window in the living room,
chanting, "Come on, come on," like a mantra to bring him
home safely.

Finally,
I saw headlights turn into our driveway at the far end. Relief washed
over me, almost leaving me limp, and I went out on the back porch as
he pulled his truck around to the back of the house. He came bounding
up on the porch, soaking wet, and shaking the rain out of his hair.

"I'm
glad you're home. I was beginning to get worried! We've got to get
the horses in the barn before it gets any worse." I was almost
having to shout over the wind howling through the massive oak trees
behind the house.

"Okay,
babe. Give me just a second, and we'll go round them up."

I
ducked back into the house, grabbing my oilskin, and then whistled up
the dogs to help get the horses towards the barn. Our horses have
never liked being cooped up, and I knew that with the weather as bad
as it was, they would be skittish and hard to handle. I looked down
at my Australian shepherd, Taz, and pointed out towards the pasture.
"Go get 'em!"

He
took off like a shot, ears laid back against his head in the driving
rain and tail up like a flag behind him. Trixie, his female
counterpart, took off after him, and I knew it was just a matter of
time before I saw the horses topping the rise at the end of the
pasture, relentlessly being driven towards the barn by the dogs.

Martin
rejoined me on the back porch after grabbing his own oilskin, and we
tugged the collars up around our necks as we ventured out into the
forty-mile-an-hour winds and the rain that was coming down so hard it
stung when it hit my cheek. The huge pine trees behind the barn
seemed to bend almost parallel to the ground, and I started to worry
about one of them coming down on top of the old barn. I wordlessly
pointed them out to Martin, knowing that my voice would be lost in
the roar of the weather around us, and he nodded. He knew, like I
did, that there was little we could do to prevent any damage this
storm chose to inflict on us.

At
the barn, the storm seemed to conspire against me as I struggled to
open the small side door. Once I had it open, it was snatched from my
grasp by a gust, and slammed back into the side of the structure. It
was a little quieter in the barn, but it only served to highlight the
creaks and groans wrung from the old building by the storm.

While
Martin struggled to pull the door closed behind us, I made my way
down the aisle of the barn to the sliding doors, intending on getting
them open so the horses could easily come inside once the dogs had
them headed this way. I slid the door to the side just in time to see
the horses top the hill to the side of the barn at a gallop, head
high, nostrils flared, and the two dogs nipping at their heels.

I
stepped to the side as Taz and Trixie herded them inside, and turned
to see that Martin had the stall doors open. Each horse had headed to
its own stall, snorting and blowing.

"They
feel it, don't they?" I almost yelled at Martin as I watched my
gelding, Striker, paw at the stall gate, tense muscles highlighted in
his chesnut neck.

"I
haven't seen it this bad in years!" he yelled back, busy
throwing hay into each horse's stall, and checking to see that they
all had water.

"Are
you sure they'll be okay in here? What if one of those pines comes
down on the barn?"

Martin
looked out the door of the barn, and nodded his head at a lightning
strike that arced out of a sky that had turned a sickly
greenish-yellow. It struck the ground perilously close to us. "They
need to be in here. Out there, they'll be under the trees...and may
get hit. They may not be happy, but they'll be safer here."

I
helped him check the last couple of stalls, and then resigned myself
to the trek back to the house in the rain. Even though the air was
relatively warm, the rain was icy cold and would manage to find its
way under my coat to drench me in seconds. I motioned to the dogs to
stay, and nodded to Martin that I was ready. We ducked out of the
side door, and it took two of us this time to get it closed. Martin
swung the latch, and I turned to head back to the house. We both took
off at a trot, holding our oilskins closed and hunching our shoulders
against the rain. We made it about halfway to the house when thunder
roared right above us, and the crackle of lightning made the hair
stand up on my arms. A deafening crack sounded, and I looked up to
see half of one of our massive oak trees leaning impossibly.

Martin
dived for me, and pulled me to the side as half the oak came crashing
down where I had stood seconds before. He yelled in my ear,
"Tornado!" and forcibly turned my head to make sure I saw.

I
looked towards the pasture and saw a dark finger reaching out of the
strange sky towards the ground. It didn't seem real, and I probably
would have stayed frozen there to the ground, but Martin grabbed me
and pushed me towards the creek. "We have to get to lower
ground!"

I
stumbled towards the creek, almost unable to see where I was going
through the downpour—and still deafened by the thunder seconds
before. Martin dragged me, forcing me to keep up with him, until I
reached the short bank above the creek and fell about three and a
half feet to the creek bed below. Martin was right behind me, and he
pulled me up against him as we huddled against the small overhang
that seemed to be our only shelter for the moment. I was shaking, not
because I was cold, but because I had seen the damage tornados can do
in a split second, and we now had one bearing down on us quickly.

A
rumble started getting louder, vibrating through my body, sounding
like a freight train flying through the air above us, and again I
noticed the sickly color of what sky that I could see between
ominous, dark clouds.

"Put
your head down!" Martin yelled in my ear, and I ducked my head
down against his chest. His arms went around me, squeezing me almost
uncomfortably tight. I felt him put his head down next to mine,
pulling us both against the steep bank and the meager shelter it
offered. The crackle of almost constant lightning strikes left
negative images on my retinas. Not being able to make sense of the
chaos around me, I shut my eyes and prepared for the worst.

For
a moment, it almost seemed that the wind died a little, and I thought
for a split-second that we had dodged a bullet. I was wrong. The fury
had only taken a short breather, and when it resumed it was worse
that before. The noise seemed inside me, making my whole body
resonate with the chaos. I could feel Martin's arms tight around me:
my anchor to the earth. The rest of me was consumed by the storm.

Time
dragged. The scream of the wind seemed about to burst my eardrums,
and then it got just a degree quieter. I thought that I had to be
mistaken, but after a moment I realized that I was right. The chaos
in the air was almost imperceptibly slowing. I finally dared to raise
my head and open my eyes and was greeted with a landscape that was
vastly different than it had been when I had last seen it.

The
oak that had cracked in front of us looked like something from a war
zone. Half of it was still standing exactly like it had been, the
other half had been twisted from it, turned upside down, and slammed
back into the ground. It had taken part of the barbed wire fence with
it, and wire stuck out at weird angles from the tree itself. There
were pine trees down in the pasture, looking almost like dominos in
the uniform way they had fallen, one right after the other, and the
shed where we had kept the riding lawn mower and yard tools was
completely gone. The wood from it was probably two counties away. The
rain had faded to a slow drizzle now that the wind wasn't flinging it
this way and that.

Martin
was gazing around at our reconfigured yard, amazed we had escaped
with just a few scratches. He finally looked at me and asked, "Are
you okay?"

I
nodded, my mouth too dry from the terror-fueled adrenaline rush to
speak. He brushed my hair back from my face, and looked directly into
my eyes, "You sure?"

I
coughed and finally found my voice. "Yeah, I'm okay, just
scared, that's all."

He
pulled me roughly to him, leaned his chin on my shoulder, and I heard
him say, very quietly, "I was scared, too, babe."

Martin
kissed my cheek, then moved his lips to mine. He kissed me very
gently—as if afraid I would bruise—and then his kiss
deepened, and I kissed him back with a passion and urgency that
surprised me. The adrenaline in my body came surging back, not in
reaction to danger this time, but riding tandem with an overwhelming
urge to feel his body over mine.

I
leaned back onto the mud of the creek bank, pulling him with me. His
lips never lost contact with mine, and he groaned into my mouth with
a need that matched my own. I could feel his cock even through all
the clothing, hard against my belly. Martin raised up long enough to
undo my jeans, and then my hands were with his on my hips, pushing my
jeans down and off my legs. The mud underneath me was infinitely more
welcome than my soaking clothes had been. Then, my hands met his
again at the waist of his jeans, fumbling with the button and zipper
in our haste to reassure ourselves we were alive.

Again,
he was on me—his weight a blessing—and his lips on mine.
Martin pushed my t-shirt up and fastened his lips around my nipple.
The contrast of the chill drizzle of rain and the heat of his mouth
brought chill bumps to my skin. I reached between us and held his
cock in my hand, heavy and familiar, and then guided him to me. It
was my turn to groan when I felt him push into me.

He
pulled back briefly and whispered, "Babe, I don't think I can go
slow..."

I
hushed him with a finger over his lips and whispered back, "I
don't want you to go slow." I arched my back, trying to draw his
cock deeper into me, and his body answered mine. He sat back and
hooked his arms under my knees, lifting my ass up to him, and started
driving his cock into me—hard. I held on to his upper arms,
trying to find leverage to fuck him back, needing him so badly it was
frightening.

He
released my legs, and brought one of his hands around to my pussy,
seeking, and then finding, my clit. His touch was all it took to send
me sliding over the edge of an orgasm, screaming my pleasure to the
clouds. He fucked me through my orgasm, and I could feel my pussy
clenching tightly around his cock.

I
heard him groan, "Oh, damn...babe..." and then he put his
arms back in place behind my legs and lifted me up to meet his
thrusts.

"C'mon,
baby," I gasped, "fuck me. Give it to me."