the storm is always raging somewhere,

greater and more terrible than our experience.

the lives of others and their dealings being

an academic sort of subject,

we pass naturally into cocoons made of

complacency,

be they made of money, or just pride.

but the storm is still there, and

our turn comes, whereupon we ask

“why us?”

as though the many whose misfortunes we ignored

were never actually there.

humanity is not an inherited trait,

it is an awakening.

and, as they say back home,

that storm

will wake your ass up