A Hurricane Species Poem by Stan Petrovich

A grovelling species
-Origin, Africa-
Swinging long arms
And digging for worms,
Develops,
Filtering off the west coast
As batches of thunderstorms
That grunt pre-words
And fight; then wander
Over the open emptiness.

The heat amasses
And splinters them into groups,
Going separate ways,
Each bearing a different hue.

Then, to the amazement
Of observers, sprawling,
Enlarges to a subcontinental size,
And barges forward,
Trailing as a spiral,
And evolving overnight, almost,
To take lives, kill and eviscerate.

We are this species
With the hurricanes following.
They fear nothing,
Unlike a cape,
As we fear them.
We must, therefore, fear ourselves,
To the ends of the seas.