Red River to Nowhere

 

By: Hunter Christian

 

Massive rain clouds have been stalled,

Over the southern Great Plains for days

Torrential rains fall

Evacuations were ordered – yet bullheaded folks stubbornly stay

 

 

And, the Red River of the South is rising

Its riverbanks strain to hold back;

the ebb and the flow

The mud and clay banks begin to crack

 

 

Anxiety grows

Farmers and ranchers stack sandbags on top of earthen levees

Fear reigns heavy

Darker clouds build to the north-northwest

 

 

More rain will surely come

Heretofore, sermons spewed about when the Red River will crest,

Becoming an obsession for some

The angry mob decries that, at all cost, the angry river must be tempered, must be wrest

To flood waters hardy folks deign it a damned failure to succumb

Rugged communities blessed at God’s behest

Protestants, Methodists, Presbyterians, and all the rest

 

 

Including a small community of forty or so Syrians

For life, fortunes, and land; families dutifully appressed

Invested too are the Russian Orthodox Catholic Siberians

Also represented are the Eastern Orthodox Church for Liberians

 

 

A goodly priest from Algiers calms sullen fears

White men, black men, American and foreign shed God-fearing tears

Drought sent tithings into arrears

To a drunkard estranged wildcatter the face of Jesus himself appears

 

 

All stand around him with mouths agape and minds amazed

With a Godly boom from the skies above thunderclaps concuss unready ears

The Red River rises as hands raise

To the Father; to whom they pray and praise

 

 

Rumbling thunder makes the communities' children wary

A lightning bolt strike ignites fire on the parched prairie

Feuding Texans join forces with rival Oklahomans

To wrangle cattle to safety despite ongoing generational borderland disputes

All the while, Southern Baptist preachers decry End Times omens, and;

to alleged cowboy debauchery their sermon loudly imputes

 

 

The Red River of the South swells higher

as prairie fire engulfs a quaint North Texas town

Burning a Southern Baptist church from its rusted spire;

down to the reddish-brown hardpan Texan caliche ground

Floodwaters crest, grasslands afire, the situation becomes menacingly dire

Descending from the hauntingly dark clouds above without warning, a funnel cloud touchdown smacks violently upon the hardpan within a flurry of ominous sounds

 

 

Like an angry freight train with a death wish on a runaway torrent

Trembling feet holdfast to shaking ground

In the glazed-over eyes of God's faithful subjects aghast, the sight of the a mile-wide tornado reflects frighteningly abhorrent

From the swirling anger of the twister's blackening winds,

timber, glass, and townsfolk's keepsakes and artifacts are sent violently aloft

A voice cries out, “Did Armageddon hath begin”?

 

 

Waters break through compromised levees; trickling through walls of dirt and grass weakened and soft

The fires on amber grassland burn increasingly hotter and ever more intensely

Breathing becomes laborious as air inhaled into the inhabitants lungs weighs deadly heavy

Into action go emergency plans hatched in a frenzy

 

 

Then, hitting everyone’s eyes with terror, comes the most horrific of sights;

when into the ominous blackened skies,

the tempestuous tornado plucks children from the hardpan ground, tossing their tiny trembling bodies upwards into flight

From the mouths of horrified onlookers, the words “Oh, my God!” rise, as terror invades petrified eyes

 

 

Still, the river’s blood red waters spill over its broken banks

It would not relent

Frenetic paced men shovel, labor, sweat, and bleed with backs bent

To heaven, while down on bending knees, the devout and faithful folks send prayers of reprieve and thanks

Down river, within a crimson rush, a family’s house dislodges from its foundation and away it went!

 

 

Chaos ensues as chaos will –

with no leaders to lead

Amidst the chaos, intrepid shovels continue to shovel to fill –

spots in fractured levees where the river was freed

 

 

Raging water washes away soil as it washes away planted seed

Just as the fury seemingly could not get any more ominous or any worse;

from Mother Nature’s wicked deed,

the tornado tearing through the Texas panhandle like a wretched curse,

Bringing hell to the Red River Valley exactly between prime and terce,

In a blink of a tearful eye,

By the time the clocks ticked past sext and none,

The blackened skies clear

And…

God's Wicked Triad was done

After much consternation, the levees held; and the day was won

 

 

Between the following morning’s prime and terce,

clouds had cleared, yielding respectfully to a scorching late springtime sun

Nary a word spoken by the townsfolk concerning forced attrition, the cost of penance, retribution, or consequences of wayward folks punished and cursed,

Nope, back to the fields farmers went, with stern directives from ranch owners, back to the range roughneck cowboys were sent,

And when that first Sunday after the Wicked Triad abated, off to their prospective churches went devout fathers, mothers, daughters and sons

In the American southwest, the Red River of the South runs