on 4/2/05 10:30 AM, Alison Croggon at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> I meant to say that the peaceful, refreshing rain of the other day kept
> coming - and coming - and suddenly it turned into the biggest rainfall ever.
> We got three months worth of rain (five inches) in 24 hours...huge storm,
> trees blown over, blackouts everywhere, seas up over the foreshore,
> jellyfish and piles of seaweed dumped on the grass and all the protective
> rocks washed away, all trains cancelled because of flooding, and snow in the
> mountains where earlier in the week they were issuing bushfire warnings.
> All very bizarre, even for Melbourne!
>
- Before I knew all of the above, I, on tother side of Melbourne, got up and
wrote this,
Midsummer Storm at Night
- but it will never make it to poetry, so here it is, a mere domestic
document...Max in North Balwyn
The loud storm, which woke us at four and kept us awake
expecting the roof to flood down through to us again,
set up a banging, like wood against the bedroom wall.
I said to her, itıs the shed door, most likely.
In my dressing-gown I went to see if I could see,
stopping first to mop the sunroom flood
that had formed again where rainwater seeps
under the window glass onto the cork-tiled floor.
Peering out the back door into the noisy wet dark
I could see the shed door, whose rusted hinge
I have been ignoring, was not swinging to and fro.
To check further Iıd need to step into the wet gale.
Oh back to bed with a backache, and settle the question
whether or not to move from the vulnerable room,
its total flooding that past night never to be forgotten,
to the guest room bed, smaller, awkward, quiet, safe.
I think the stormıs abating, blowing itself outı.
We lie under the quilt insecure unmoving
while the storm alternates gale and rain,
and the wooden banging continues intermittently.
I visualize next morningıs inspection,
some large leafy branch heavily balancing on the roof
and belting the house as it swings.
Now Iım up, why donıt I go and look?
Later, I open the door for the dogıs first look outside.
She steps out, turns round, steps back in
canıt get past the fallen branches on the path.
I lift them aside and push her through.
Now I see what I imagined in the night:
a broken branch, thick as my wrist,
resting on the bedroomıs slanted upper glass.
Its great weight of twigs and leaves holds it there.
At tea and toast time, the wife can look up
straight into it. The glass, filthy but uncracked,
the strong branch of the gumtree already
under sentence of death. Phone that tree surgeon!
7.15-11.45am Thursday February 3, 2005
And not surprisingly, the tree surgeon is only attending to emergencies just
now.
|