BROODING SUNSET BEFORE THE STORM

BROODING SUNSET BEFORE THE STORM

Brooding sunset before the storm. Over ripe apricot

left out in the sun too long. Heat brain

boiling its thoughts in their own womb.

The clouds lumber like thundering Diplodoci

Slowly and in herds. Continental rifts in Pangaea.

Black outs and the lightning roots

of unknown blossoms sticking out their tongues

like petals to taste the first drops of rain.

The air menacing, thick, humid as lipstick

foreshadowing climactic things to come.

Sky bound i.e.d.s, and the pigeons scattering

for cover under the eves from overhead drones

that have been circling all afternoon

with the turkey vultures looking for road kill.

The windows set up like easels for the show.

Action paintings of still life with blitzkrieg.

The crackling of glass that layered black over white.

Oleaceous vapours of asphalt on roofs and roads.

I can smell the late Jurassic in rut from here

as black pearls roll off my skin like new moons

sweating tar. And now it’s as dark as a crucifixion

on daylight savings time, as the opalescent grays

homogenize into Bosch armies on the Western Front

just before a rolling barrage in No Man’s Land.

The hemorrhaging, the deluge, the venting, the rage,

a welcome relief to holding it all in though

everybody’s not going to like what they hear

and the fire hydrants are jealous of the rain

and the end of the world is more American than Mayan

bring it on like the hillbilly hippies drunk at the Imperial.

Anticipation. Latent exhilaration. Acoustic guitars

meditating in the corner, chanting aum to resonate

with the positive ions of a punk rock band on the rampage.

The cows plop down in the fields, and the seagulls

for the duration of the saturation bombing run

are grounded like kites on a reconnaissance mission.

Hilarity of chaos outflanking the usual order of things.

Mosquitoes and blackflies biding their time

under the monstrous leaves of the soft basswood trees.

Wrens and swallows in their medicine bags and begging bowls,

bees in their hives, prophets in the belly of the whale,

here comes a delegation of lightning rods to reason

with the open-handed extravagance of the revelation

that we’re as vulnerable as we ever were

in a time of stagnation to cooking the books

when the gods come to get even with us ethically

and the imagination asserts its ancient privileges

over the prophylactic rituals of our own worst case scenarios.

Some to dance naked in the rain. Some to stand

under lone trees in open fields trying not to get bit

by a snake pit of oracular lucidities with the aloofness of a lottery.

PATRICK WHITE