Mother mixes meatloaf in the kitchen.
Her hands are red with beef.
Father and I stand bare feet on yellow linoleum
watching the storm swell through rattling screen door.
Four kittens lookout from corner
of a three-step porch.

Cyclops drops splatter concrete
sidewalk tumbles over Catalpa’s worming roots.
We remark as rain turns to hail and charges
tin roof of an open, telephone-pole barn.
Mother crunches Keebler’s crackers
with sticky palms, “you two should step
away from the door,” she said,
and off flies the Weber lid.

The Catalpa powders
grass with cottony blooms.
Even the Maple shivers.
Father and I stand gawking
while Mother glazes
the loaf with Heinz.

Just as she bends, opening
burgundy oven door-
Kittens quiet in mid-mew.
Cattle in field do not swish tail.
The Sovereign Catalpa splits in two.

Long after Father cleared the rarely traveled gravel road,
I sat on cool linoleum waiting for another sign-