As the clouds gather over the vast, flat Kansas plain,
The whispering winds dance through the cornfields,
The grazing cows stop, clairvoyantly detect a change ahead
Merely a hint of things to
come.
A battle begins in the heavens above,
As air masses collide and tumble,
trying to reign supreme.
Clouds blossom, and begin to shoot up,
Mountains of dark, churning
masses envelop the sky.
Day becomes night, as the cows glance skyward,
Ever mindful of what will come next.
Towering behemoths dominate the scene
As the empty plain becomes
the stage for a gripping performance.
Ground shaking booms overwhelm everything in sight,
Blinding strikes of lighting, Mother Nature’s stage lights.
The earth quivers, fearful of what has yet to arrive.
As an army of hailstones blanket
the plain.
Then, the moment approaches, the towering thunderhead spins,
A massive rotating wall drops downward from the storm.
The thunder and lightning increase without mercy,
As the monstrous storm prepares
to give birth.
Then, through the lowered wall of cloud,
A funnel peeks through the bottom,
Seemingly teasing its potential victims,
It stays high in the sky, waiting
to strike.
A great mass of dust spins below the funnel,
Rising to join with its new-found sibling.
The cows, too close, retreat across the pasture,
All too familiar with the impending
doom.
Suddenly, the small funnel streams out of the cloud.
Expanding violently, rotating ever faster
Finally, it meets its partner down below,
The tornado is formed, and
the dance has just begun.
With the grace of a swan, the massive trunk swings across the fields,
With the fury of a bull, it shatters everything in sight.
A barn, creaking in agony, is splintered into oblivion,
Confetti of wood blankets the sky.
The tornado tears on, raging and growing,
Now clothed by a thick layer of dust.
But remains just a dwarf compared to its parent,
An umbilical cord joining the
clouds with the ground.
Abandoned trucks become play toys,
As they are whisked about, and stripped in the air.
Mere pieces are flung violently back to earth,
As if God Himself was enacting
His rage.
The tempest, having reached its peak,
Suddenly has its dance cut short.
As mile high winds tear up the thundering parent,
The child, still churning,
can only look on.
Soon, cornfields and wheat are all it can consume,
The larger pieces rain down
to earth.
The funnel, once a raging half-mile,
Withers away, narrowing, and
narrowing.
It finally dies, the performance is over,
The once towering mountain is torn to shreds
The thunder and lightning subside,
And quiet returns once again.
Eventually, the raging canopy has vanished,
The cows, lucky survivors, return to their fields.
The clear, blue sky returns to the Kansas plain,
With a shower of plants as a tribute to nature’s show.
