~ Storm Over The Desert ~

A restless wind swept in

strumming the loose screen

at the open window

then just as suddenly seemed

to swirl down a drain

in the floor of the desert

Dirty clouds began scudding in

looking like scrub rags

that swabbed a filthy floor

Lightning with a dragon’s worth of teeth

flashed across black clouds

sharp and bright

Thunder crashed

the sky convulsed and shook off

a million silvery scales of rain

and then a milling more

An inverted tree of lightning

caught fire

it’s trunk in the heavens

and it’s branches shaking at the earth

a second tree overlaid the first

and a third overlaid the second

a brief lived bright forest

that burnt out even as it grew

Between the charred sky

and the ashen earth

the rain resembled shimmering

curtains of smoke

as the storm swallowed day

© 2006

Carole Mathys