Storm’s Coming

The wind woke me up early. I expected it. Not the wind, but to be woken up early and uneasy. It’s happening a lot. The weather is a physical manifestation of the nightmares that have been with me for a while now.

The wind shakes trees, moves in gusts and blusters. Threatening is a word. Leafless trees bend and sway. Some break. Those that break easy are long gone, victims of an earlier storm, lucky if they’d passed childhood in this reverting place.

It is a prelude to a bigger storm in a continuing crisis. Winter. Unsure of how to proceed the seasons of late have been uncertain and erratic. It is not a mix of hot and cold, good and bad, but all sinister, only a misplacement of danger, a blockage that collects and readies to cover everything in storm all at once and lingering to untimely change.

There was a time when such moments were beautiful to me, but some to the anticipatory thrill is lost in modern time. I see the only storm now, fearful and narrow. The posturing of clouds and rain— soon to be snow— is already taking a toll on nature, and life, and woken minds.

This storm will be big. It will alter things now and for long. Possibly permanently. It is coming. You can see it in the sky, hear it in the boughs, sense it in the air. Coming. Dread and wrath. This expectation is but a pause in the wrecking. Storms have never been so frightful before. The rules are changed, the game is fixed, the future is dark. 

It may only be two feet of snow, a few long hard painful moments forcing reassessment of insulation and economy, but I dread it. I remind myself that, eventually, it will retreat. Nothing is forever. Even if I will not see the conclusion, it will pass. Storms bring endings that must be endured so spring— hopeful, distant, undreamed of spring— may arrive and have something to do.