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# Twister
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/twister/
- Published: 2026-08-20T13:55:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T13:55:00.000Z
- Description: “Twister,” 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 © 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Current Events, Dry Humor, Generational, Humor, Of Place, Poems, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

Devices ping, screens flash  
*Tornado Warning In Your Area*!  
  
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   
— 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* 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—"   
I resume.  
She cuts me off mid-syllable: **IKNOW.**  
  
I squint, wonder on how to name the color of the clouds.  
"Yellow and gray is — grellow?"   
More eye rolls, can I be surprised?  
  
"I am *not* 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* 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.