Storm Brewing

In a grey sky
a dark cloud. Spreading.

Rolling out from under it
a rose and copper cloud with purple veins
stoops over us.
A school ma'am on her rounds
not liking what she sees.
She straightens
topples fast towards us
flattening a white cloud child.
The child keels over knowing that its time is up.
No cry rings out from the dead child
but mournful wailing comes to us from somewhere afar off.
Sea cries like a chorus answers it.

A dark cloud issues from her skirts
rolls back upon itself. From skirt and bodice now
the rose and copper cloud spawns other clouds. Streaked,
mottled, ink dark, glowing, stirred
as by an unknown hand, they bubble, burst, come to the boil
as though there is a heat source hotter than the sun.

Softly they drop towards the sea
like feathers from some bird kill in the sky.
The water is in turmoil. Dark beyond the rocks
and far beyond man's dark imaginings, but blazing white
where now it's springing skywards from its slapping of the rocks
before it crashes in a shower of flying shards on top of them.
It's mirroring the clouds. It rolls. It plunges. Spirals
inwards. Is flung in all directions. Water ejects water
in great jets. Great gobs of water are sucked down. Spewed out.
Subdued. Waves turn into tunnels. Spouts turn inside out. Are holes.
Become the sea's black holes. No light escapes them. Stars
might die within them. We would never know.

Water pours down from the clouds. At first fine sprays.
Soon these are heavy, bouncing columns battering
the pock marked surface of the sea with all the vigour
that the sea expends upon the rocks.
The rain welds sea and cloud together in some conspiracy.