Storm of no storm only drum rolls and light bright as sun breaking through dark clouds flickering, faulty wiring but not here not over this house
over the hill along the river the storm strode following the smoothest path and the sound of its passing roared like a torrent like a gale in the poplars
with not a drop of rain and no leaf stirred in the phantom wind.
What do they hear in the storm the birds in the swaying trees? What tongue speaks to them from the clouds, who watches, predator-patient in the light-flicker? And what metaphor suggests itself to souls that have never known a faulty fuse?
We watch the lashing boughs bending and trembling, wind-whipped, and worry about cables, damage, insurance, the work of weeks among the plants wrecked.
House-boat creaks, timbers crack, rain seeps, cats hide where the fearsome dark won’t find them, but the child sleeps in her mother’s arms,
chicks too perhaps in their storm-tossed nests, while soft-padded hunters prowl the rain shafts, indifferent to the growling of the beast.
Another night and day of storm and picking up the battered tomato plants. Another day of light that changes with lightning rapidity, booming with the drum roll of thunder. No fire this longest day and shortest night, the sky too charged. Who would tempt the force that draws up wind and tempest with our puny defiance? an ocean of clouds sails the sky all the shades of the storm and we watch and wait for the deluge, the rattle of rain and the detonation of thunder echoing in the attic, sending the cobwebs flying while cats cower no mice-dancing matters when the sky is unchained In the dog chamber, a sleeping hound, deaf to the bombardment, sleeps. Night is night is night, a time to let the bones rest and dream dreams of those young days of the wild hunt sleep the balm for old age a moon sighs.