This Damned Storm

2020-04-24
by Eleanor Goldfield

Grief –

that cold consuming storm

suffers no lack of description –

is not tempered by ignorance or experience –

even the most fortified succumb –

as if solid stone were nothing

but stacked blades of grass…

and as we flail in this wind,

our bodies lash and our limbs fly frail –

the siren call of calm feels ludicrous –

absurd, impossible –

at best a discredit to the spring of this storm…

I can weather this?

with my mind fixed

on its would be assassin –

or if I can not – I will die

and in death become a conduit of tempests –

a passive passage for cold consuming storms –

a repeater circuit,

stuck in a groove of its own electricity.

But no, I do not want this storm to take me –

I am not ready for my soul to pass

to this storm’s whipping whims.

I can not control it –

any more than I can control the weather –

but I may weather it.

Cliche – but for a reason –

This treason to poetry a relief for my solitude

Still, I may find a hole in the depths of myself –

one I have never seen before –

I may carve it out of my living breath –

create it in this jagged slow haste

that mocks the passage of time –

and as I dig I will falter –

find myself stuck in the toxic mud that theories my arrogance –

for if I am worthy of outliving this storm,

am I not pedestaling my own life

above the sunken soul

that gave birth to these winds?

I will fumble with answers and find none that fit –

I will scrape myself raw –

building a bunker that keeps the wind out,

but floods with the surges I let rinse my doubt.

And so we will dance, this damned storm and I –

unfit partners cast in this twisted remake –

we will blow and shout and rumble

the storm will be no worse for wear –

it will pass as senselessly as it came –

it will polish the sky so the brilliance will blind –

but I

will never be the same

yes, the storm will pass – but this jagged abyss will remain –

that bunker will keep – an imprint –

a macabre fossil of pain

and I will visit again –

before the end.

I’m quite sure.

The clouds overhead promise me so –

passing silently

over the ruins of my freshly dug depths – grave.

At time it will seem impossible – that I ever was there –

that this storm and I ever came to blows –

but then I’ll hear an echo –

of rumbles, I’ll see –

reflections in someone’s drenched eyes –

and then I’ll feel it –

the press of that imprint – gripping my mind.

Another day, another forecast

another questioning sky

another fragile step outside.