October Storm
On lonely nights of wind-whispered rumors,
When the rain flows down the windows
Like tears down your face,
And the wind snarls and howls,
Blowing brown autumn leaves
Across the fields,
I sit and remember the past,
and I live a little more in the past,
As though my personal history could teach me something.
When the lightning flashes like my grandmother's camera cube,
When the thunder roars through the dark-gray skies
Like a father looking for his child,
When the trees blow and bend,
Giving away their dying and dead children,
And I sit inside and look at the fury
And listen to the sounds of the passing storm,
I look back into my memories
And remember odd days of pain and joy
That are called childhood;
And occasionally I find a gemstone in the rubble,
And I wash it in the rains of my memory,
And I try to learn something now
That I didn't learn then, when I was the
    terrified wide-eyed child.
And the main thing I keep learning
Is that I'm still that frightened child,
Sitting through another stormy eve
With the winds and the dead,
Safe and scared and lonely.
© 1996 Bill Abbott