A poem, two paintings, and a prayer.

Another storm is on its way, carrying a warning on its wind. We spent yesterday stacking wood to ready ourselves for fallen trees and power's failure. Easy food ready to cook on the wood stove, water filling buckets, car tucked into a mountain's side. Again.

Deep breaths for the vulnerability.

I do okay alone in the woods with my children. Most days I can pretend there is no darkness. I close our blinds at night just as the sun is setting. The lights go on, the candles are lit. I look at my paints, my books, the TV, anything to not feel the vastness of the night outside my door.

Except for the times when I sit on my deck and fly away up to the stars. Those nights where I am brave enough to bathe in black, imagining the cougar's cry while staring at the pin pricked night sky.

Yes, I have those nights. And they are magic. But....

Storms are a different beast. Howling winds and rain or snow, each drop, gust isolating us further and further until I feel like we are completely alone in the world.

You have never known a storm until you've met a storm on a tiny island sitting in the ocean.

So I take my own hand. I take my fear and worry and I wrap it up inside of myself, while pouring out a prayer that everything will be okay.

All I am left with is trust.

Storm by Emily Dickinson

There came a wind like a bugle; It quivered through the grass, And a green chill upon the heat So ominous did pass We barred the windows and the doors As from an emerald ghost; The doom's electric moccason That very instant passed. On a strange mob of panting trees, And fences fled away, And rivers where the houses ran The living looked that day. The bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings whirled. How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!