The clearing of a smoke screen

I dedicate this poem to all of the people who voted in my poll yesterday.

Not a single person voted for me to write more poetry. 😉 

It started as a faint whistle.

Scarcely audible…

To the point that she wasn’t sure she had heard it at all.

***

And life went on.

Jobs to do. Money to make. Adventures to have.

Her life was not a whisper.

***

But then, again, the whistle…

Hardly louder; but there just the same.

Warning.

***

She tended to the noise

and wondered, briefly, where it had arisen.

It was so quiet, though…

perhaps no one would believe it even existed at all.

***

“Did you hear it?” she whispered.

To no one in particular.

***

And life went on.

Writing to do. Careers to build. Relationships to celebrate.

Her life a smoke screen to the turmoil boiling underneath.

***
With ever increasing frequency, urgency,

the whistle grew louder.

In her stomach, a rumble.

A knot, tightening, turning.

***

“Do you feel that?” she asked

of everyone she encountered.

Silence and scorn, in return.

***
Even as the ground began to shake,

Life went on.

As if the here and now was all that mattered.

***

“Are you crazy, or am I?”

the whistle, now deafening, drowned out her question to the world.

***

The ground shook as the train roared in,

tilting on the rails.

The conductor blasted the horn,

one final time.

A pounding, a screeching, as the cars slammed into the ground,

sliding and piling.

Destroying everything,

and putting an end to all the questions.