Calm Again

Snooping deep into Alex Shapiro's blog archives, I found a marvelous posting regarding a wind storm in Malibu, and its aftermath. Her prose was inspired, and it took no effort to rearrange it into verse. Her posting was from January 26, 2006.

Calm Again

It is striking,
actually unsettling,
just how utterly still
the air has been
all day and night.
Not a leaf moving.

In the wake
of the wind storm,
the only hint
of the previous madness
is the remaining pile
of small branches
and tarry pieces of roofing
lying at the doorstep.

I will find another time
to clean up the evidence;
for now I stare
at a large ficus tree
next to the house
that two days ago
threatened to break,
and wonder
how it can stand innocently
amid the tossed deck furniture
and broken planters
as though nothing
had happened.

The sole movement tonight
has been the sudden thunder
or well nourished raccoons
chasing each other
the 60 foot length of the house
and back again,
using my roof
as their racetrack.

The heavy dotted rhythms
of their gait
shook me
out of the undotted rhythms
of the passage
I had been writing,
and I palmed a flashlight
to have a look.

Standing under a bedroom skylight,
my eyes peered up
to follow
the battery-powered beam,
and were met
unexpectedly
with the equally curious gaze
of a masked creature
who probably wondered
what I was doing down here.

Before I could finish
grinning,
he bolted again
for the far end
of the rain gutter
to catch up
with another loud-footed
friend.

Down by the shoreline
this evening,
it was damp and still
as well.
Only my mind
continued to race
with the wind.

Alex Shapiro 2006