in the light of the storm

GRIFFIN PLAAG

our ashes sleep freely in the dim green

concrete walls & tempered windows clean

in the light of the storm.

the mantic prisms in stormlight born

alight the rivulets of sky (to warn

or prophesy the

THUNDERous din of thronging feet) –

mother called them giants on the ceiling and

that scared you sometimes.

the water makes me think of lobstermen, rime

and seafoam sheen, the sound of time

in fractals, barometric

pressure rising, rising, sailors panic

(the lobsters don’t; they’re contented

with their natant cages,

glabrous shells excited), now cue the rages,

queue the bends and contemplate a sage

veteran, for strength,

think of pericles and see how that went

(now)? now the time is spent

and you will leave no eucharist,

no rites and no remembrances,

swallowed by the storming watery cysts

and neptune teal.

go kiss the sand; thou art sunken. kneel

at the wrath of all the gods. steal

one last glimpse;

mighty autumn has been felled; zeus limps

into september and poseidon’s triaged scepter slips

past the security, like a

battery, like it needs a new one, like the formica

counter where you cook has changed demetra

so her leaves no longer change.

but still we taste the hurricane malaise;

still once a season all of gloucester holds its gaze

east, to the atlantic,

to the doppler of our passing persephonic

and the logos of the fading epochs strong and meady tonic

in the light of the storm.