Her winds can't touch me here

in my dungeonus shelter between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Saint Helens.

I live in earth quake country

not

hurricane land-

It could be an amusement park:

(Gulf Coast Land of Bullshit,

come and face Andrew, and Katrina down

if you dare

stare

into the eye of the storm.)

I can feel the wind off of the Pacific on my back

as I take my walks

sunrise

is pink

like sunsets

in Washington

(I'm a Washington girl, born, and bread, no matter where I go

I will always have the smell of evergreen's on my skin.)

I was born of ash

swept around

in the face

of "her" winds

never to catapult to the Pacific.

If I swam out into the ocean

to compose my poems

on the backs of the Orcas

would I be made

one

with nature

and make love

with those winds

so deadly

(would that storm take me down,

deep in the eye

of it)

I stare danger down

like a stupid girl,

I hunt

for food

and the satisfaction

that I can kill something weaker then myself

(isn't that was humanity is

human

calamity)

I step twice

into this storm

and out-live her winds

from my ocean

to hers;

she and I don't stare down the same planes

but is it Katrina's halo

that halts

the crest

of weaves at my feet?

Is it her fury

once so savage

that now

as a child

without her wraith

becomes wreckage against my own shores?

I stare the wind down

with my eyes open

even though they burn

and shout

that she will never take me

or my Pacific down.