Main Attraction
Hazelhurst, Mississippi
After the tornado whipped from our heads
every last illusion of controlling
anything beyond ourselves
(with even that caveat blasted with doubt),
in the quiet devastated lot
of our scoured and bewildered thoughts,
we saw you standing in the middle of the rubble
balancing a soda bottle on your head
watching us with untroubled eyes,
nothing of which said I told you so,
only you had, while we had seen
you nothing more than a circus freak,
with your agile acrobatic flips,
your quick answers to preposterous math.
We beat you down, we stared and laughed,
you saying nothing (after the warnings)
only to disappear again.
We now know you were right all along,
and we were the clowns with ridiculous faces
dangling upside-down with our knees
draped over the fraying high wire
thinking we were the main attraction
while nothing more than a gathering disaster
balancing ignorance between our eyes,
unable to see that angels come down
in the garb of the thing we are prone to reject
until it’s too late, until the dust settles
on the scoured swath through the middle of town.
Notes:
Hazlehurst was devastated by an F4 tornado on January 23, 1969 killing 11 people, injuring 140, and damaging or destroying 175 homes. The tornado struck unsuspectingly with local weather forecasters failing to give warning. Three years before the tornado disaster, a strange illiterate pre-teen boy would periodically appear in town, balancing a soda bottle on his head, and proclaim warning of some impending unspecified disaster in the town’s future. The boy, being odd and unsettling, was often ridiculed and beaten. He came and went over a period of three years until the tornado hit, after which he was never seen or heard from again. In 2010 local filmmaker Steve Collins, remembering this boy from his youth, embarked on a project to research this enigmatic individual, and ended up finding him in nearby Natchez living with his cousin. His name, it turned out, was Cordelle Leake. He was later given a public apology for his mistreatment in the days of his youth and also a key to the city of Hazelhurst for the service he had done, even though it had gone unheeded. You can read more about this story at: