| There are bridges over rivers
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| There are moments of collapse
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| There are drivers with their feet on the glass
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| You can kick but you can’t get out
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| There is history in the rooms of the house
|
| After dinner do the dishes
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| Mother hums, the coffeemaker hisses
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| On the stove, the steam a crescendo
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| The radio emergency bulletins
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| And everywhere wind
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| You took the train down to Terra Haute, Indiana
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| Visit family, your childhood home
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| Give your mother her grandkid and father a kiss
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| Put your luggage in your bedroom in the kitchen sit
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| With your husband still up in Hudsonville
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| Until the weekend when his shift ends at the furniture mill
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| Running water for the dishes and the coffee on the stove
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| Heard a warning from the corner on the radio
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| And the glass starts to rattle in the window frames
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| So you went underground
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| Took the staircase down
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| To the cellar full of hunting equipment
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| Held your baby in your arms
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| Read the labels on mason jars
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| Try not to think about your husband in Michigan
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| Stay calm
|
| Keep the radio loud
|
| Take care
|
| Wind howls
|
| Father piles blankets in the corner by the furnace
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| Mother lights candles
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| It’s a miracle the baby doesn’t cry
|
| Back home doing yard work outside
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| Husband being stubborn under dark skies
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| Saw the fence by the neighbor’s shed split
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| Saw the kitchen windows start to bend in
|
| So you went down to the back steps then to the basement
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| There were bookshelf plans on the workbench
|
| And a flashlight shining bright all night try not to think about your son and
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| your wife
|
| And the lightning that scattered the night sky
|
| And the wind bursts that tore up the power lines
|
| At the workbench in the basement
|
| Where you sat and tried to wait out the night
|
| You called for three straight days
|
| Still with your family back home
|
| Up in Hudsonville the worst of the storms touched ground
|
| And the phone lines were down
|
| Turn the radio up
|
| There’s a woman
|
| Who got thrown from her car into a barbed wire fence
|
| She was 6-months pregnant
|
| Both her and the baby lived
|
| You tried but the line or…
|
| I remember those nights
|
| I couldn’t get through
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| To you when quiet storms came rattled the window panes
|
| Couldn’t keep a thing the same way when the storm blew in and the furniture
|
| rearranged
|
| I can see lightning there and a funnel cloud
|
| And her mother said «I swear I saw lightning in your eyes
|
| When that call got through to the other side.»
|
| Stay calm
|
| Keep the radio loud
|
| Stay down
|
| There are bridges over rivers
|
| Sirens in the distant
|
| Wind howls
|
| Keep down
|
| Then
|
| After dinner do the dishes
|
| Mother hums
|
| Wires snap
|
| Metal gets twisted
|
| There’s the rattle of the window glass
|
| Bending in
|
| Take the children down
|
| Terra Haute
|
| Coffee
|
| Thanksgiving
|
| Stay calm
|
| Keep down
|
| At the workbench
|
| Stay
|
| And the coffeemaker hisses
|
| Stay calm
|
| Keep down
|
| Turn the radio
|
| There are
|
| There are moments of collapse |