Shrouded is the moon tonight,
The starlight bides its time;
A solitary bat takes flight,
Seeking better clime.
The trees, they shiver restlessly
Awaiting things unknown.
The grasses ripple fitfully;
Earth shudders to her bone.
No cricket song, no croaking frog,
The night bird's call is still;
The very dark enwrapped by fog,
Subject to darker will.
A heavy stillness mutes the air,
The wind now holds its breath;
An unseen power~fey or fair?~
Has forced it still as death.
[this piece has been redacted for publication in my school's literary journal!]
His breaths are copper leaves ripped from a cedar.
She hears the gale in his chest rattle the blinds.
Before the bed can roll over to smother them,
She heaves it off, hearing the storm slam into the window.
She tastes the salt in the downpour, feels
wetness speckle the backs of her hands.
“Abraham’s tree has its foot in the water”—
at this staticky song of the weather report,
she laces her boots with typha, lifts him
in one thin arm, and cradles him over miles of
sharp puddles. They slice at her soles, but she splashes
Approach of a Storm
I saw the lightning leap from the mountain's crest
And a roar answered from the heavens.
An eagle, spiraling to her rocky nest,
missed the thunderbolt by a feather's breadth.
Quickly the clouds cloaked the sky,
Swiftly the sun was veiled in gray.
The wind had risen, cold and high;
It swirled and gusted, then it died.
In the silence I heard the clouds
Pouring a hundred thousand
diamond drops to the ground
While the thirsting earth drank them down.
Look at me; I can see my reflection in the glass
doors as I pull them wide.
I was running before a storm
and I could smell the rain
above the dusted plains
heavy and gray, what held it there?
She ran down the road—
I felt the dust in my throat:
dust yellow like chalk,
like a memory.
Look at me; I can see my reflection in the glass
chandeliers that clink overhead.
Tempest-tossed in the rising wind
that sent things into flight.
She—I?—bit her fingernails
and looked around with widened eyes.
They compare eyes to windows,
a way of looking in;
or glassy, like a mirror--
are you but a reflection?
Eyes like water, too, they say:
deep pools, deep seas.
But pools may freeze
and seas may swell with storm.
Glass and water, they trade
similes as one and same.
A pool of tears, a looking glass--
I'm always slipping through.
But I can't reach through this mirror.
Ice has covered
the pool of your reflection;
there is frost on the window to your soul.
(A/N - My interpretation of the stillness right before the clouds drop everything they're carrying.)
The calm before the storm:
quietly frightening,
innately peaceful;
unsung power emanating throught the air.
The buzz of life stops,
the hum of labor ceases,
all is still -
waiting.
(A writing exercise that had to use all the words in the title)
“Teacher, are you there?” Isabel whispered, tapping the rough tree trunk.
An eye blinked open and swiveled down at her. “Is it summer already?”
Isabel grinned and nodded. “It makes you thirsty. You really want a drink.”
The knothole of wood that was her teacher’s mouth shifted up at the corners. “My roots are deep enough for that. You just want me to make it rain.”
Spin, spin, pulse and wind
Tempest, storm, pulse and whirl
Round, round, pounding clouds
Pulse, pulse, surge and beat
Dark, ash, cold and rain
Torn, torn, smoke and seas.
Surge, surge, swell and gale
Heave, turn, beat and wind
Grey, grey, tempest breath
Charles tightened his hold on his pistol grip; blood was making his fingers slip.
Sprawled on the rain-soaked floorboards of the now roofless building, water pelted down in apathetic torrents over his defeated figure.
The heat from the burning house around him made the numerous cuts and wounds on his body sting, the blaze illumkinating both him and the tall man standing across the room. "You thought you could go on, have a life?" the menacing voice echoed in Charles' ears.