{"id":2441,"date":"2026-08-20T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2441"},"modified":"2026-08-21T00:30:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T00:30:44","slug":"twister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2441","title":{"rendered":"Twister"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Devices ping, screens flash
Tornado Warning In Your Area<\/em>!

I see movement in my periphery.
I peer up and out my office window,
see trees several stories high buffet in the winds.

Rains come sideways, vertical, diagonal 
\u2014 an intentional pattern? 
Perhaps the gods and goddesses 
are weaving the tornado a tartan for the occasion.

My teen joins me, pushes past, 
presses belly to full-length window.
\"Yes. The most exposed part of the house
is always<\/em> the safest place to be in a tornado.\" 
Straight delivery.

She rolls her eyes.
\"Mom we should be in the basement.\" 
She cranes her neck, 
both palms flat on single pane glass.

A generation bred on IMAX and 4DX, 
she seeks a better angle.
All the better to absorb visual chaos, 
and to accompany surround-sound 
rush and rumble, roaring raindrops.

\"The skies turn green when a tornado come\u2014\" 
I resume.
She cuts me off mid-syllable: IKNOW.<\/strong><\/em>

I squint, wonder on how to name the color of the clouds.
\"Yellow and gray is \u2014 grellow?\" 
More eye rolls, can I be surprised?

\"I am not<\/em> going to the basement.\" 
She proactively rebuffs, talking over me as I say:
\"We should, probably, go to the basement.\"

So we stand, still, stubborn.
Still, able to be awed.

We drop to a rare, comfortable silence
as the heavens battle the forest.
I point my phone out the window, 
try to capture a live view.

Before we are ready, whirlwinds shift, skies brighten.
I press Stop<\/em> on my camera app.
Her pupils constrict back to normal judgement diameter.
Back to our previously scheduled programming,
spell broken, she pushes past me without a word.

Though marked safe from a tornado, 
the warm front of adolescence meeting 
the cold front of motherhood 
means storms can drop without warning.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cTwister,\u201d a moment in time between thunderclaps, written Thursday, August 20, 2026 poem 222 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “Weather Front,”  by Diana Ludwick \u00a9 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,811,262,311,200,1572,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-current-events","category-dry-humor","category-generational","category-humor","category-of-place","category-poems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2441"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}