All night the wind has fought with our
cottage.
It wakes and unsettles a part of me
that is unsettled by such noise
as it is by all the colours of grey
we must live with throughout these summer
days.
But your country has weather big enough for
both of us.
It tumbles an outermost house into the sea
to careen
on a stranger beach in Chatham,
or a tornado whips up Dorothy into another
state.
Hurricanes with names benign as dimpled
grand-aunts
come to tea and scones
but leave you stranded in their wake,
flood you with their grief.
A man once told me about the wind in Oklahoma.
It flung their screen door into Saul
Weller’s garden,
whipped one blade of straw from the barn
and drilled it right through the glass
of
their kitchen window.
It held there, needle-straight, the pane
intact,
lights blown, food in the icebox melting.
Before its contents folded onto the floor
they were allowed eat all at once;
pistachio, dark chocolate, black cherry,
while the straw lodged tight in its place,
breaking their mother’s back.
Our lives are built on vagaries of
weather,
one well-aimed gust and the sandbars
of memory crumble at our feet.
