Ahead of all storms

Gusts stir restlessly in trees, blowing leaves over lawns, silhouetted birds fly across a low cloud shaped like a fish skeleton, that gradually morphs into a starship, gun-metal grey on a light slate background, and swims or flies off east.

Minutes later, sudden calm. The sky, now blue-grey, changes color to an ominous peach-pink, glowing from inner light. And then the front arrives, and it’s a dash for shelter. Clouds hunker down, glower at the greening. Thunder comes too soon after the strobe.

skies bruised with torrents
push the flood hard uphill,
past sheltering wasps

*

The storm, in the mythology of bees, is the wet disrupter, long waster of flight time, obliterator of scent trails. To the birds, it’s falling sky shaking the perch, knocking heads and berries down. To groundhogs, who give up munching grass to scurry for burrows, it's the bland interrupter; it cannot reach into home, warm damp dark home, crossroads of earthworms. The deer speak nothing, as usual.

the first squall passes,
steadying down to grey sheets—
nearby, unseen songs