After The Storm - Part 1 Poem by Paddy Scott Hogg

The wind blew wild and furious
Whistling hell-notes thru the wires
A wall of rain, sheet after sheet, surged
Battering every roof and window, bouncing off paths and roads;
Dark, heavy clouds, like angry squadrons, charged across the sky
Swooping o’er the hills to the west: a reckless army,
Dragging shadows of night across a frightened day.

Back to back they came, unrelenting,
Like giant crushers trampling o’er the land
Boiling the sea to a dark sandy frenzy
Whirling a thousand white-crested sea horses upon the foam
Like the ‘drap o’ water’ that takes the lost trawler down, down,
On the icy kiss of a North wind gale!

And the grass lay down
And the cattle gathered by the end rig dyke
Crowded with their heads bowed, to breathe; to shelter:
The village streets were empty –
No-one dared venture into the roaring storm’s blast
It was the worst storm ‘in living memory’:
Ropes thrown o’er cliff ledges, up gulleys
Lobster pots laying, flateened,
Almost bemused, dazed, beyond the high-water mark
Like broken soldiers dispersed after an unequal feud;
When the elements mixed a supernatural rage:
Boulders the size of houses now stood where sandy shores once were
Trees of olden times were cast to the earth like twigs, broken, shattered:
Roofs lay gaping like mouths ripped open;
Caravans were piled like a bundle of match boxes in a field;
Slates flew like random black knifes in freak gusts;
Sheets of plywood sailed through the air like paper blasted;
Wrack and sea-weed piled deep along the new made high water mark;
Floating bhoys were catapulted, thrown like corks from waves
Gathering, churning, racing, building and blasting the coastline,
Cutting the very earth, re-shaping the shore
Like biting diggers of earth’s fury incarnate
Taking back land once ruled by the ancient kingdom of the sea:
E’en the thunder and crash of rugged cliff rocks falling,
Tumbling in avalanche, brown-golden rusted, rubble and dust
Could not be heard amid the rapturous rampant symphony
The clattering chorus of cyclotronic chaos mid the storm’s ragged fury.
The power and the glory of earth’s elements unleashed.