Without Warning

I ripped another page from the calendar hanging on my kitchen wall. We enter the month of May with thoughts of Spring swimming around in our heads. The sun is shining bright on the days it isn’t raining. The snow vanished into distant memory. This month I plan to explore a poetry style that reminds me of a trickling waterfall. Udit Bhatia created the Cascade poem. There are no rules for rhythm or meter. The layout is simple in that the lines of the first stanza are repeated as the refrain lines in the stanzas that follow. The poem flows like this ABC, xxA, xxB xxC. Add lines to the poem longer. Thus, you are making a cascading effect with words. How hard can that be? This Cascade Poem I titled Without Warning.

Note: I will also be adding Black Out Poems as we go along the way. I plan to keep using this style until the book I’m using runs out of pages for me to play with to create these unique and visual poems. I might as well get started. I’m excited about jogging down this road.

Without Warning

Without Warning

There is not always a calm before the storm
Sometimes there is only heat and humidity
The rumble of thunder in the distance
And the wind starts to blow
And dark clouds fill the sky

I don’t want to set off an unnecessary alarm
This is no time to experience timidity
There’s something evil moving in our direction
And it’s traveling at a fast tempo
There is not always a calm before the storm

The sun lulls us into sweet captivity
A summer day without resistance
It turns deadly on a dime
But how were we to know
Sometimes there is only heat and humidity

Danger spoils our play and threatens our existence
An early warning, a collective shy
Sound the alarm and run for cover
A call to arms and energetic activity
The rumble of thunder in the distance

Tension in the atmosphere starts to grow
It makes a person doubt their mortality
Hearts of  the helpless fill with fear
So many questions that end with why
And the wind starts to blow

So many reasons for a person to cry
Living in a world of mediocrity
A racing pulse to let you feel alive
Nowhere to run, nowhere to go
And dark clouds fill the sky

Who is Molly Shea?

Molly Shea is an accomplished fictional short story writer from Indiana who writes short stories and novels about a fictional town called Tecumseh.  To read more of her short stories and adventures, click here.

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