There are bridges over rivers
There are moments of collapse
There are drivers with their feet on the glass

You can kick but you canâ??t get out
There is history in the rooms of the house


After dinner
Do the dishes
Mother hums

The coffeemaker hisses on the stove
The steam a crescendo
The radio emergency bulletins and

Everywhere wind

You took the train down to Terra Haute, Indiana

Visit family, your childhood home
Give your mother her grandkid and father a kiss
Put your luggage in your bedroom in the kitchen sit

With your husband still up in Hudsonville
Until the weekend when his shift ends at the furniture mill
Running water for the dishes and the coffee on the stove

Heard a warning from the corner on the radio
And the glass starts to rattle in the window frames


So you went underground
Took the staircase down
To the cellar full of hunting equipment

Held your baby in your arms
Read the labels on mason jars
Try not to think about your husband in Michigan


Stay calm
Keep the radio loud

Take care
Wind howls
Father piles blankets in the corner by the furnace

Mother lights candles
Itâ??s a miracle the baby doesnâ??t cry


Back home doing yard work outside
Husband being stubborn under dark skies
Saw the fence by the neighborâ??s shed split

Saw the kitchen windows start to bend in

So you went down to the back steps then to the ba!@&(t

There were bookshelf plans on the workbench
And a flashlight shining bright all night try not to think about your son and your wife
And the lightning that scattered the night sky

And the wind bursts that tore up the power lines
At the workbench in the ba!@&(t
Where you sat and tried to wait out the night

You called for three straight days
Still with your family back home
Up in Hudsonville the worst of the storms touched ground

And the phone lines were down
Turn the radio up
Thereâ??s a woman who got thrown from her car into a barbed wire fence

She was 6-months pregnant
Both her and the baby lived
You tried but the line orâ?¦


I remember those nights
I couldnâ??t get through to you when quiet storms came rattled the window panes

Couldnâ??t keep a thing the same way when the storm blew in and the furniture rearranged
I can see lightning there and a funnel cloud
And her mother said â??I swear I saw lightning in your eyes

When that call got through to the other side.�

Stay calm

Keep the radio loud
Stay down
There are bridges over rivers

Sirens in the distant
Wind howls
Keep down

Then
After dinner do the dishes
Mother hums
Wires snap
Metal gets twisted

Thereâ??s the rattle of the window glass
Bending in
Take the children down
Terra Haute
Coffee

Thanksgiving
Stay calm
Keep down
At the workbench
Stay

And the coffeemaker hisses
Stay calm
Keep down
Turn the radio
There are

There are moments of collapse