Half A Storm Poem by Peter Merrington

It barely thundered halfway. Caught like a cough,
a fist smashed into cloth, choked air. Lead is the softest,
heavy grey scumbling of the downpipes clogged with
leaves.

Clotted the day shifts past, unknown, self-shaming,
a failure even as vagrant, sick at his own image. Under this
winter sky the heat, a fevered body – can’t act, can’t sleep;

All Cape Town reduced to sad franchises where flags droop
and tarmac ticking over for the rain to work the slick like
stuff in a sick man’s throat.

Da! And one fat drop. And the alien sun, musing sun,
it slips away relieved, blazing livid on those low clouds,
o crepuscule, dark stranger at the kerbside, eros pink

thief of hearts, lady of dusk love, shrugging at the
curtal manhood, bad thunder in our twisted guts.
Sad day with belly and no fire. Boom. Pa-dum.

Sunday 18 May 2008