…
In the afternoon heat, as the humidity climbs, and redoubles,
and a bank of pewter cloud crowds the horizon, muscles forward
from the south, dimming the light, and as the wind shifts;
cooler, blustery, I’m in the right place—have made my way here—
deliberately—
to witness the storm.
…
Outside the bookshop there was a man with a look—
haunted, opaque—now he’s here
in the village square,
pacing in the rising wind that agitates the trees and strips
the leaves to swirl in the air like snow, and he stops,
facing the oncoming storm, to make an elaborate sequence
of gestures that begin above his head, going all the way down
to where he presses both palms
into the earth.
…
When I look again, he is spinning clockwise
on a broken office chair, face heavenward.
He stands and again gestures, on the opposite side of the square,
and this time he finishes with a two-handed flourish, sweeping twin arcs
in the leaf-beds at his feet. I sense but do not understand
the symbolism, yet see he has addressed
the cardinal directions.
…
Now he has finished,
the storm hits.
…
The rain comes in sheets, fat droplets smacking into the ground,
and the man crosses the road, unhurried, melting into the rain, as
the wind snaps branches from the trees and a huge bough
crashes to earth from the mother-fig tree. People huddle under
shop eaves as hail cracks a hard staccato on tin roofs,
deafening the world. Then, its fury spent, the storm lopes off.
…
The sky is released and changed. An orange haze rises
from the horizon to blend with the delicate violet-blue
of now-quiescent clouds and a single crow flies south
to north. If the man were here, he might tell me what
it means, but although I look, I cannot see him.
…
Night falls. The hiss of cars on wet asphalt returns,
and people reappear. There is music in the street now,
and people are dancing. I am writing and a girl asks
whether my journaling is creative or personal.
I don’t know what to say, because it is none of those things.
It is wind and rain—a secret magic I cannot know,
nothing more.
…
I see the man and run after him. He is wary, but I
learn his name, and when I mention the Archangel,
beloved of God, he brightens and agrees to talk.
I saw your gestures and they looked like prayers, I say.
They were, he says.
What do you believe in? I ask.
I believe in
the Light Horse,
the Dark Horse,
he says.
In Light
versus Dark,
in the Holy Spirit.
But that is all he will say—
he drinks the music,
and only wants to dance.
And when he does,
he bends as a sapling
in the wind,
hands tracing
invisible lines—
the Light Horse,
the Dark,
the secret magic
of the air
…
…
Start Here → Next: [Under the Bridge] · [The Night is Young]· [The hill]
