storm from a Salford bus stop
The storm bears a million images,
shattered pieces carried wide and scattered
beyond the worlds that bore them all,
through the raging screaming beauty of the tireless winds,
tossing, turning, howling,
spurning the idea of ever settling down;
rain falling hard on anything it can,
nourishing naught but the whimpering whistling winds
to soak
alive and inanimate alike, in all directions,
whipped like a whirlpool with no ocean,
the tears of bruised black clouds
beaten empty
by the wildest winds they will ever see or feel.
They say such storms come only in autumn,
but who can tell when it takes a lifetime
or more to learn their ways?
I dream of flying, falling, dancing, leaping,
hoping some night to go singing their songs,
to grow great on the waves of the stormy winds,
to call the unknown names of each and every sister
who sings alongside me
in the sweeping sighing weeping scrying winds that bear us on,
that lead us forth when no one knows the paths,
that show us more
than we could ever have asked for;
a million images, a billion words
caught and carried,
kept forever
and swept away by time:
A million billion fragments
of just as many lives
and they are just the start
with so many more—
ahead, behind, to left, to right;
time will own them all, someday,
and not a one be saved.
—