Storm On The Clash Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Once, driving down the Clash in a white-out blizzard
My knuckles, bone-tight, gripped the useless wheel
The tyres rebelled, assumed a life of their own
Skidding as fancy took them, close to the killer drop

They say an owl can hear a mouse
Under a foot of snow. An owl would be mad
To spread its wingswhen the sky is flooded with flakes
Trillions, a galaxy falling, an onslaught of cold

On such a night, the silver river of ice that is that road
Is terror, a slither of death,hideous,out of control

A skid away from disaster. My heart raced like a hare
My whole self clenched, five souls in the car
My family, all on onepath, eggs in a fragile basket

Nemesis or survival? Winter destroyed the landscape
Heath, trees, smothered, buried by Nature's anarchy
The world was a blind eye, a mouth stoppered by silence

One mile in the pitch black night in the whirling snow
Miraculously, the tossed coin of chance landed heads up
We reached the foot of the brae, by a twist of fate

After, the abomination of what might have been
Hit home. I lay in my bed and shuddered, wide awake