Storm Warning

EARLY today the house was dim and still,
But ivy, scratching at the window sill
Sounded like fingers picking at night’s lock.
The east was red as fire at six o’clock.

All morning long the rusty windmill turned
In a discordant, burning breeze that churned
The iron swell of the sea to a tatter of foam,
And shook like rags the small craft sailing home.

The boats are moored now, bat tened down, bone-white
As cut-out paper in the ashen light
That yet reflects a shadowless, hot glare.
A dog’s bark, far away, blunts in the air.

The cattle brood, hour on oppressive hour,
Munching dry grass; milk in the pail stands sour,
And leaves turn inside out, pale as they spin.
The shrilling cricket’s plaint is vexed and thin.

The pallid sun, metallic as the moon,
Stares with a jaundiced eye at afternoon,
While mackerel gulls, with swirling wings and wet,
Cascade across the sky in silhouette,

Whirling inland, scattering and screaming
Like banshees, born of a vindictive dreaming. —
They warn of that voluminous, huddled crest
Of clouds that smoulder in the low southwest.

A paltry spit of rain pockmarks the sand,
A prong of lightning spears the arid land,
But still no storm to split, the heat asunder —
Miles off reverberates the plunging thunder.