The Storm

My family sleeps around me
in heaps of darkness
on the floor.
A wick, left burning
to soothe our troubled sleep,
shivers, drowns in wax.

The bedroom shifts
between walls of driven rain.
A gale strips siding,
wrinkles shingles,
blows notes
across vent pipes on the roof.
Branches scrape the window,
drawing me from bed
to kneel before the glass.

Our neighborhood 
is a rattle of shutters,
a roar of trees
bending to the storm.
Branches snap,
tumble to the street,
skid across pavement
whipped with sheets of mist.

Soon the rain subsides,
the wind calms
beneath a swirling Eye.
Houses, streetlamps loom dark
against a veil of clouds
aglow in moonlight.

Scott Speck
09/17/99