Spring Storm

     "What doesn't the wind lay claim to?"
          —Rainer Maria Rilke

Scarlet tulip petals strewn by last night's
winds litter the gutter. Their colors still
vivid in a driving rain, they begin
to gather themselves like flaps of torn skin
closing where the culvert rises. Uphill
a pen holds freshly shorn sheep huddling white
in the middle of a flock—drenched and gray
as the sky—that runs past them on the way
to their morning feed as though astonished
at surviving what turned their mates to ghosts.
The brilliant yellow field of rape where Rice
Lane bends west in this light seems swollen twice
its former size and the stripped dogwood hosts
a family of mountain quail banished
by the storm. I have been sick for five years.
Walking through such mornings eases my fears.

Copyright © 2003 Floyd Skloot All rights reserved
from Poppies
Silverfish Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission