This is early morning light. I sit at my table
recording those first thoughts that spring from the chink of knowing between
sleep and wake. The sky is a brooding indigo, augury of the shower coming
across the hills, so big it will deluge us in no time. The wind begins to rise
and I watch the shower as it moves in to attack. It beats off the glass as if
trying to get in, so loud its heavy thud is bound to wake my sleeping family as
it rages overhead.
I look out to the left and right and front of me.
There are strings of water beads falling to earth, on the long grass where the wind rushes the
wintering of things, My cat comes
running down the field, a tortoiseshell roll in a field of dying grass, finds the one cloche
with an easy access and hides there from the demon overhead. The wind battles
the naked branches of the rowans, the dried-out umbels of angelica. The clouds
shift to pour down over the stone fort on the hill.
All signs indicate we are in for a bad day; but slowly
the slowly begins to lighten from its indigo to something resembling blue and
the storm clouds move off into the other villages, away over the Corrib to beat
upon the islands of the lake. As the sky brightens, the house begins to purr
like a giant cat being stroked by the hand of God. I have written the storm
out.
