Our house eats itself by the hour,
its machinery dense, lit-eyed,
beeping.
There are forty-seven weathervanes
on the roof, huddled like crows on wire.
My father likes the way they tremble
all at once.
I have been in twenty-six storms.
Four tornadoes.
One eye.
From the desperate calm I watched
the wind suck an oak up straight.
My father slicked his hair
and my mother got out the camcorder,
shot him with his arms up,
laughing and shouting and trembling
all at once.
He looked like a paper doll,
or maybe a question.