I wasn't there the first time a storm destroyed your farm. I never saw the lightning strike. But I've known a few of the scars.
They grow like beached salt and steal life by the harvest-load.
I camped in your forest once. I made a fire of your wounds, found the still in a thicket and drank until I believed moonshine was never meant to be lonely.
I have feared everything you fear. Your storms have grown.
Thunder Beasts and Wind Sharks chased away your answers, left a path of needles and pills
in their wake. Their floods dressed as home long ago. They live like squatters in a house of untold stories.
So much still grows upon your fields.
Monday, doctors cut a crop circle into your cornstalk hair, shaped like a question mark, to remind you where the answers have always been.
... This poem originally appeared in Cantaraville. It is also included in Colin's first full-length poetry collection, The Mattress Parlor(Scribble Fire Press, 2011).