THEN A PALE GREEN

The Cape Cod rosebud blooms in sacred sunshine on the quiet of a warm, blue sky April day in Missouri. The dogs sleep on the side deck beneath the shady canopy of the torn green colored patio umbrella. Birds sing and speak. The hummingbirds have returned zipping and then pausing in the sky like tiny alien helicopters. They seek the honeysuckle vine and the sugar water of the feeder hung above the fence-line along the front of the house. All remains quiet; a country life peacefulness, -there can be nothing better. 
Earlier in the week I rode with a friend/neighbor in his truck with cattle-carrying trailer pulled behind to a family member's (his family) destroyed house. The tornados having caused a long path of damage through the area north of us in south-central Missouri (Dora, Missouri) and that had apparently made the national television broadcasts, had begun to move off but the roads were nearly impassable in certain spots. Power-lines were down, tree limbs were tossed everywhere and the progress in the truck was slow. My good friend and I arrived at the tornado ravaged home to find many, many other cattle carriers and various trailers parked in the front yard as other friends and neighbors had arrived to help with the damage and the salvage of the possible belongings worth saving and storing. It was a site to behold and it was my first time at seeing a home so 'gutted' and torn into pieces by such a power of a twister. ( I was to learn later that it was actually three tails of twisters having split and then converged again that ripped into the home) It must be added at this time that ALL occupants of the home (Thirteen, I understand) survived by holding out in the cellar of the home. Two people were saved by their fast act of stretching out and keeping low in one of the bathtubs of the place. The two saw furniture and articles moving down the hall as the stuff traveled and was sucked from the home! Incredible. A life-time of belongings destroyed while all stated the same thing, 'At least no one had died as most material items can be replaced'. Still, one can never make 'light' of the loss and the painful frustration. This could have happened to ANY ONE OF US on any given day or night. We are at the edge of 'Tornado Alley' geographically and it is always a deadly reminder of how fragile we can all become in a single moment. Mother Nature can be gentle and Mother Nature can be feirce! 
When the earlier-than-normal heat arrives and then the coolness of a northern air mass collides with it, here in this part of the country, all hell can break loose!  The thunderstorms becomes a hail storm and then silence and then a deep breath of a silent vacuum and then a possible sky of dark turns to a pale pink and then a pale green and it is usually all the warning that any person will ever
get. Look for a funnel cloud! 

So the earth turns and the life we experience is what it seems. Blue Sky follows darkness. There is a dance and a rhapsody. There is a cold rain and a sun-filled pasture of green grass soft and warming and allowing the eye to meander along its expanse and open width. There is the call of the cedar waxwing  and the golf-course size holes dug in the yard by the armadillo. April turns to May, May to June and the summer unravels its blanket of color and heat over us all. In the dusty road the cat strolls looking each and every way. The water snake moves along beneath the surface of the creek's water beside the wreaths of darkening watercress. The llamas relax in the shade of the sycamore tree. And still the poison oak grows. And still the morning glory blooms and climbs. And still the child recalls his mother. And still....

-RSC. {Elijah, MO.}