Flow - Poetry Please - June 22nd 2008

 June 22^nd2008

The dawn comes swooping, smearing shades of grey

On grey and deeper grey. The ill-formed clouds

Take fright and flee like endless ghostly herds.

Stampeding from the hunter of the sky.

Fully-rigged the jiggling trees cling tight to earth,

Boughs bouncing, roaring like a waterfall,

They huddle, bend, explode and wildly flail

Their lashing limbs, cavorting. Back and forth

The flowering-cherry sapling bucks and bows

And flings its spindly arms around in grief,

Or like a captive pleading for her life,

As every leaf turns inside out and shows

Her paler underside. The hosta swirls

Like seaweed under tugging shallow waves

At turn of tide. Flashing photinia leaves

Show red for danger, rattling dragon scales.

The peony is stripped, defrocked, her petals

Torn away, the fabric ripped, as wide-eyed

Nicotiana shiver at each fusillade,

And flinch to face such fierce, unequal battles -

Defiantly petunias flaunt their flags,

To taunt the elemental force majeure,

Those hueless banners of the charging air,

That sky-wide stream of shabby, shapeless rags.

And through the night loud whispers, cries and moans

Surround the house until at last the stars,

Those distant, fiery, cold-eyed arbiters

Appear to signal truce. The wind declines.