I had never fully comprehended or delved into the exact destructive quality of this harbinger of destruction. how it can literally send wheat through trees with its incredible winds, how it can carry entire houses untouched for hundreds of miles, and how it can snuff out the life of a budding soul without mercy.
I ask ask you to read the following poem and short story and think on the incredible power of this whirling dervish of death. Thank you.
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Born
from clouds of a sickly colour,
Like
a ravenous snake falls to the earthen floor.
Living
from wind, and feasting on land,
It
ravages the hills, both earth and sand.
Cold
and warm, wind and rain,
This
bestial force truly is earth’s bane.
Falling
to earth and tearing o’er the world,
Tis
a fearsome sight, as it twisted and swirled.
Stopped
by nothing, devouring all,
Catching
up beast and man, to death it shall call.
Cold
and warm, wind and rain,
This
bestial force truly is earth’s bane.
Ever
spinning like a death-born top,
It
thunders across all, nothing to it stop.
Until
time takes it toll, and the tapering beast,
Is
lost to memory, no longer to feast.
Cold
and warm, wind and rain,
This
bestial force truly is earth’s bane.
But
left behind is a barren remain,
From
destruction nothing did the wind abstain.
Lives
being lost, and tears having shed,
And
to destruction untold this calamity led.
Cold
and warm, wind and rain,
This
bestial force truly is earth’s bane.
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Dark clouds covered the sky, their foreboding
shadow mimicked by their rumbling thunder and the flashing lightning. Hail and
rain crashed down into the soft earth, pounding the ground remorselessly until
pits and fissures of frothing rainwater pocketed the plain. A sudden jagged
cord of lightning forked out of the black clouds, momentarily lighting up the
dark shade like day, then sailing down and ensnaring a lone tree in fiery
electricity. It snapped and fell, charred, to the sopping earth.
The
sound of the felled behemoth was lost to the storm’s fury, iridescent flashes
of lightning lighting up the skies periodically as they leapt through the
skies, followed moments later by the booming drum of thunder.
Above
in the clouds, the black blanket of rain wasn’t enough to hide the strange
phenomenon forming in the heavens. Unnaturally colored clouds, swirled and undulated
in a circular mass of writhing green and gray clouds. It quickly twisted into a
tapering cone that sunk to the slaked earth. And as it touched down, a roar of
rolling sound drowned out the drumming of hail and the constant noise of
thunder as the thing began tearing across the earth, throwing up clouds of
grass and sod as it ate through the ground across the valley.
Trees
that had survived lightning strikes were torn from their powerful rooting and
flung into the maelstrom of whirling air currents as the writhing powerhouse of
destruction came on, paving a path of ravaged soil that was quickly washed into
a river of mud by the following storm.
The
polymath of disaster soon had its fill of the valley and tumbled up a hill,
bending its monstrous body in an abstract form as it breasted the hill and tore
through a rocky outcropping, throwing boulders the size of cars into its swirling
maw.
An
unlucky dwelling stood in the path of the howling storm of death, just below
the valley hill; and the tornado fell upon it like a living beast, ripping into
it with an explosion of splinters, stone and dried mud fragments. The houses
solid foundation was physically uprooted and the entire dwelling was lifted
into the spinning wind, and was tossed in erratic circles, half its walls torn
away.
Farther
on the whirling hammer of nature went, battering through copses, dipping and
uprooting animal burrows as it carved a road through everything it came upon,
quickly meeting and dealing out destruction to everything it touched.
Soon
not just a house was found occupying the wind-born hound’s belly, but now whole
herds of animals, sheep, cows and pigs were left spinning out of control in the
harbinger of doom. Trees soon resided in its swirling body, along with leaves,
soil, hail, and countless other objects, which soon turned the sickly, roaring
creature a rainbow of a hundred colors, only adding to its foreboding air as it
flung itself upon the land; extending rampant winds in its wake as it flew
across the ground, ever onward toward its next victim, destroying everything in
its reach until it itself was snuffed from existence.
-Z Baner
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