Roland Sodowsky- A Poem

Proteus

sailed in last night from parts west

Wichita, Boise, someplace out there 

and on a whim over the neighbor’s house

bodied from cumulonimbus to water

split into 6 billion raindrops     hit the roof

tore a hole     tossed a tarn in the attic

ran down    soaked the Persian rug    back on top

gathered to endless sheet flat as you please

gleefulled down the shingles     eaves trough

transmogrified to noisy snake    slithered

toward the downspout    right-angled in

between our houses reformed to pond

surged across the yard    percolated the dirt

drenched roots rocks    giggled at fleeing worms

seeped below and through our walls

chortled like Loki into the basement

under the dryer     outraged an heirloom trunk

ruined a mattress    floated litter box to sump   

pool-altered    resnaked (skinnier this time)

writhed up through the pipe and outside    laked    

laughed with the frogs    berserked the gutter   

launched forty garbage cans    roiled into creek

   

swamp some cars he thought as he rivered

whack a bridge    next week what?    waterspout

avalanche    herd the damned seals    ice cubes

Roland Sodowsky grew up on a small ranch in western Oklahoma.  He has three degrees from Oklahoma State University and studied Old High German as a Fulbright Scholar in Germany.  He has taught linguistics, literature, and creative writing at OSU, the University of Calabar in Nigeria, the University of Texas, Sul Ross State University, and Missouri State University. He has published poetry, short stories, or novellas in Atlantic Monthly, American Literary Review, Glimmer Train, Midwest Quarterly,  and many other literary magazines.  His collection of short stories, Things We Lose (U. Missouri Pr), won the Associated Writing Programs' Award for Short Fiction.  He received the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Short Fiction Award for Interim in the Desert (TCU Pr), the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines-General Electric Award for fiction, and has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award.  Now retired from Missouri State, he and his wife, the poet Laura Lee Washburn, live in Pittsburg, Kansas when he, his brother, and his son are not engaged in a continuing battle with the mesquites and cedars on their family homestead.