Isabel

Just this morning, sweet blue
capped with crystal foam
greeted me along the shore.
Now the whole Bay boils gray,
brown with silt washed down
from the rivers further north.

How the trees bend over, 
struggling like cripples 
to touch their own roots.
Their fingers break loose;
wet green leaves blow away like tears
as each trunk shatters
and the whole twisted mess
crashes through a roof.

Her horizontal rain blinds me,
stings my skin with needles
hurtling at seventy miles per hour.
Rain mingles with Bay
sprayed in a warm, gray mist
from waves pounding rocks.

Isabel, feathered in white,
wades ashore with sawblade arms,
her stare burning bright with lightning.
She breathes rain by the foot,
her girth hemmed
with walls of water
fifty feet tall.

Scott Speck
09/23/2003