Secret Life of Storms

I. Storm Warning

Demon drums & The Four Horsemen. Chaotic gusting wind, hewing fiery flames in Elysian Fields & a shaky house of cards. Super typhoon in the Ring of Fire, election mania, & Tea Party madness. Paranoia, conspiracy, apprehension & fear. Insatiable greed & lust. Rape, pillage & plunder Mother Gaia as everybody heads for the hills. See it all come tumbling  down under its own weight like a dinosaur dancing in dixie cups.

Into the gathering gloom. Cars pass heading north, headlights on & windshield wipers flapping  The low hanging sky an overbearing mass of bruised and sullen clouds.  Black widows in wispy white lace dance along the leading edge. The lake lies deep and silent, a solid slab of gun-metal blue sheet steel. No boats out on the water. Squall line moving south, the far shore hardly visible in the mist. Static on the radio & intermittent power. Lights flicker off 

and then 

back on 

again.  

This part is over now. You're off the field, out of the game. I can't believe. Who saw that coming? You. Surprised as any of us. 

What would you do 

today

if you knew 

your time was up 

tomorrow? 

II. After the Tempest

The tempest of storms with its restless thunderheads and bag of hammers and bolts ripped through the landscape. It rumbled away and faded from view like a great, migrating herd. White horses grazed in sodden fields. The air was scoured clean.

We stand under a soaring sky. It sweeps down the long lake all the way to the point where heaven and earth converge and disappear. Birds sing. A bell tolls.

The time is always now

Someday, the Grim Reaper, wrapped in hooded cowl, the thorny stem of a red rose clenched between his teeth, will climb up the garden trellis to my bedroom window 

But not today

This cascade of days with no horizon could go on forever.